[2025] EWHC 2243 (KB)

As already foreshadowed above, since the issue of the Glencore Disclosure Restriction Application the only remaining aspect of the application that remains live (as opposed to aspects that it is agreed can now be addressed in the draft order before the Court) relate to three documents that were provided from the criminal case file by the DPPO to GIAG at an early stage of the investigation into GIAG in that jurisdiction in December 2021. They are two police reports and a presentation slide deck prepared by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (the FIOD).

Following correspondence between Glencore’s lawyers and the DPPO seeking disclosure of (amongst other documents) the three documents, the DPPO did not give its consent. This correspondence, which is addressed in detail in Section F.1, is potentially of some considerable importance in the context of whether or not there would be a breach of s.184(1) of the DCC if the documents were disclosed in the English Proceedings and (even more pertinently) whether there would be a real risk of Glencore being prosecuted for any alleged breach of s.184(1) in such circumstances.

As for the three documents themselves, Glencore and their English solicitors CC confirm that they have not themselves seen the documents: see CC’s letter dated 15 April 2025 at [3] (“we understand from De Brauw that they cannot share any specific information about the contents of…the FIOD Documents”). Tolaini 11 at paragraphs 56-57 referred to this letter without any suggestion that the position had changed.

The Glasenberg Disclosure Restriction Application (brought by the Second Defendant, Mr Glasenberg, a former director and partial owner of Glencore) concerns Mr Glasenberg’s application to withhold inspection of one document, namely the MLAT Request from the DPPO and FIOD to the Swiss OAG dated 3 November 2023. Again, following a request on behalf of Mr Glasenberg to the DPPO seeking its consent to the disclosure of the MLAT Request in the English Proceedings, the DPPO did not give its consent.