CL-2022-000456 - [2025] EWHC 1938 (Comm)

Fecha: 31-Jul-2025

Mr Noble

Mr Noble

86.

The other witness who gave evidence for the Claimants at the level of the Firstline Trust was Mr Ronald Noble. Mr Noble is a US citizen, now resident in Dubai. From June 2022 until 26 February 2024, he was a director of Linea and of Linetrust PTC.

87.

Mr Noble had a long and impressive career before this, notably as the Secretary-General of Interpol from 2000 to 2014. Before the start of his oral evidence, I therefore was hopeful that Mr Noble would be objectively interested in advancing the cause of the international rule of law, and so would be keen to assist the court. I was sadly disappointed. Like Mr Fokin, Mr Noble was a very unsatisfactory witness.

88.

Mr Noble said in his witness statement that he was invited to take up his positions with Linea and with Linetrust PTC by Ms Skittides, who said that it was considered desirable to reinforce compliance mechanisms and corporate governance. Being aware of the issues arising from the sanctions imposed on Mr Melnichenko, Mr Noble said that he only took up his positions having met and discussed matters with Mr Melnichenko, and also with Mrs Melnichenko. He said that he was satisfied by Mr Melnichenko that he had divested himself of his assets in favour of the trust as early as 2006, and since then had reduced and limited his involvement and control, leading up to his resignation as discretionary beneficiary in March 2022, so that he no longer had any involvement at all. Mrs Melnichenko told him that she had no interest or involvement in the business and left all trust matters in the hands of the protector, Mr Fokin.

89.

Mr Noble also said in his witness statement that Mr Melnichenko is a principled and honest man. He also praised Ms Skittides and Mr Lillikas. He gave no evaluation of Mr Fokin, but said that he had many interactions with Mr Fokin, and got to know him when they were both in Dubai in May-June 2022, from which I infer that he was comfortable dealing with Mr Fokin.

90.

Having made this witness statement, Mr Noble then declined to give evidence. He only did so after a Letter of Request was issued by the Claimants, giving his evidence remotely from Dubai.

91.

In his oral evidence, Mr Noble was combative, evasive and obstructive. He seemed to regard it as his duty to avoid giving a direct answer to almost any question.

92.

Furthermore, given his stated interest in ensuring compliance, it was interesting that Mr Noble (unlike the EuroChem AG witnesses) insisted that the policy of complying with sanctions applied to all EuroChem companies, no matter where they operated, that such compliance was monitored by robust procedures, and that he had no reason to suspect breaches even by EuroChem’s Russian entities. When confronted with the fact that EuroChem NW2 (about which he appeared to know nothing whatsoever) dealt with sanctioned Russian banks and had engaged a US-sanctioned contractor, he appeared to be neither surprised nor disappointed; nor, even, interested.

93.

There were, nevertheless, some striking things that emerged from his evidence:

(1)

Mr Noble said that it was his general practice not to allow notes to be made of any one-to-one meeting he attended, and that he used only “disappearing messages” (on WhatsApp and Signal), evidently because he did not want to leave a paper trail.

(2)

Although he sought to portray the discussions that he had with Mr Melnichenko before he accepted the directorships as his own due diligence exercise, my impression was that Mr Melnichenko was interviewing Mr Noble, in order to satisfy himself that Mr Noble was someone Mr Melnichenko wanted at the helm of the trust companies.

(3)

In this context (i.e., the appointment of Mr Noble to the boards of Linetrust PTC and Linea and the interviews that preceded this), Mr Noble described Mr Melnichenko as “the decision-maker”. When it was pointed out to him that he had said this, he then denied that he regarded Mr Melnichenko as a decision-maker. I found this rapid back-track utterly unconvincing.

(4)

It emerged that, prior to appearing to give evidence, Mr Noble asked Mr Kryazhevskikh for documents, who duly produced them. It seems from a letter from the Claimants’ solicitors that these documents had been held by AIM Capital, on whose behalf Mr Kryazhevskikh was evidently acting when he assisted Mr Noble in this way. The documents included a letter dated 17 April 2023, which Mrs Melnichenko had sent to Mr Noble in his capacity of Chairman of Linetrust PTC. This, together with some other indications that I refer to below, suggested that AIM Capital effectively acted as the document repository for the Firstline Trust.

94.

Overall, I did not consider Mr Noble a reliable witness.