Showing Restraint

Respondent was made subject of a Restraint Order in May 2018. In January 2020, the Applicant made an application to Court alleging that the Respondent had breached the Restraint Order by failing to disclose all of his bank accounts and disposing or, dealing with or diminishing the value of his assets. The Applicant alleged that c.£125k had been withdrawn from the accounts in breach of the Restraint Order.

Although the Respondent accepted that some breaches did occur, the quantum was disputed as there appeared to be elements of double counting by the financial investigator. We were asked to analyse the accounts and to quantify the actual value of the breaches.

Our analysis identified that there was double counting: the financial investigator had accounted for sums moved between the accounts as separate transactions; accounted for transactions in currencies other than sterling, in the same bank account, as three separate bank accounts and used a flat rate of foreign exchange when using historical rates was more appropriate.

We calculated the value of the beaches to be c.£68k rather than £125k.