Case No. FD05D04818

13.On 5 July 2021 Ms Behbehani applied again for the transfer of the Setubal shares into her name for nil consideration. She acknowledged that this would involve the court’s approval and the setting aside of the undertaking given by Mr Edwards.14.For these purposes, she relied on a Preliminary Notice of Claim served on the applicant’s solicitors some four days later on 9 July 2021. In that notice she claimed to have suffered losses of between £5 million and £10 million as a result of action, or inaction, on the part of the Former Receivers in their conduct of the Receivership. On the same day she issued a further application seeking an extension of time for filing any points or particulars of claim against them so as to avoid the operation of the ‘unless’ order which I had made on 20 May 2021. She claimed in an accompanying witness statement that she required formal control of Setubal in order to further investigate its financial status in order to discover whether there had been a dissipation of assets so as to enable her to ‘contemplate [a] proper claim against [the Former Receivers] in order to prove their negligence and liability to me for allowing the dissipation of the assets from Setubal 97 SL during their appointment’.15.I notified the parties and their advisers through an email sent by my clerk on 16 July 2021 that I was prepared to list Ms Behbehani’s latest application for consideration at the next hearing on 28 July but that my provisional view in relation to the extension of time sought was that any further consideration of the matter might need to be by way of an appeal. Following further legal argument on 28 July, I was told by Ms Behbehani’s counsel that, having made enquiries, his client would require a further “two or three months” properly to plead her claim in relation to quantum. This was apparently on the basis that matters were being actively pursued in Spain and advice sought in that jurisdiction as to the potential merits of any claim. 16.In terms of her renewed application for the transfer of the shares, Ms Behbehani’s counsel submitted that the existing charge on the shares held by the Former Receivers constituted effective security for their outstanding costs of the receivership then capped at £400,000. It was submitted on her behalf that the court could not fairly dispose of the renewed application without expert evidence from a Spanish lawyer. Because I was conscious, as I have been throughout, that these issues arise in the context of this former wife’s endeavours to enforce an English matrimonial order which remains extant, I ordered that she should have permission to file and serve expert evidence in relation to Spanish law and the adequacy of the charge as sufficient security for the Former Receivers’ outstanding claim. In order to hold the balance in terms of fairness to both parties, I allowed her a short extension to the original three-month period of the ‘unless’ order until the next hearing which was listed on 25 November 2021.17.On 6 September 2021 HA Law served a report from a Spanish lawyer which described the process for registering a charge in that jurisdiction but which failed to address the issue of the extent to which it constituted good and sufficient security for the outstanding claims of the Former Receivers. The following month, on 6 October 2021, HA Law sent a further ‘Letter before Claim’ to the applicants’ solicitors repeating her unparticularised allegations in broad terms that they had been professionally negligent in discharging their duties as Receivers. As to quantum, she relied on her earlier estimate that her total losses were in the region of £10 million. There was no indication as to how that estimate had been reached.