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England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions >> Travelnet And Tours Ltd v Patel & Ors [2012] EWHC 1438 (QB) (31 July 2012) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2012/1438.html Cite as: [2012] EWHC 1438 (QB) |
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HH Judge Anthony Thornton QC
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
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Travelnet and Tours Limited |
Claimant |
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and |
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(1) Ismail Patel |
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(2) Travelnet and Tours (UK Limted) |
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(3) Travelish and Tours Limited |
Defendant |
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Mr Gavin Hamilton instructed by Hawkins Solicitors, 19 Tuesday Market Place, King's Lynn, Norfolk, PE30 1JW represented the defendants
Hearing dates: 8, 9 and 10 November 2011
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Crown Copyright ©
HH Judge Anthony Thornton QC:
1. Introduction
(1) Paris fee notes (Type I). It is alleged that IP appropriated sums totalling £27,585 from TTL. These sums were by payments made to, or intended for, TTL for services in Paris on behalf of clients and they were in fact appropriated by IP for his personal use.
(2) Cheques drawn in IP's name or in the name of his nominees (Type II). It is alleged that IP appropriated sums totalling £37,540 by drawing cheques on TTL's account to himself or in favour of his nominees.
(3) Choices Estate Agents cheques (Type III). It is alleged that IP collected and deprived TTL of refunds of deposits for certain tenancies from TTL's letting agents totalling £5,793.38.
(4) Diversion of TTL's client receipts (Type IV). It is alleged that IP personally collected, or made arrangements for the diversion to himself or for his own benefit, debts due to TTL totalling £92,708.
(5) Appropriation of TTL's money (Type V). It is alleged that both IP and TTUK took £195,118 of TTL's funds by misappropriating receivables and that IP hid this misappropriation by under-recording and mis-recording monies that were both received by TTL and paid out to TTL in the records he kept of the transactions he was involved in. A further sum of £17, 287 is also claimed under this Type.
(6) Interest (Type VI). TTL claims interest on such sums as it recovers in these proceedings. TTL claims compound interest or equitable or Law Reform Act interest at a higher rate than would normally be awarded on debts on any sums it is awarded on the basis of IP's breach of his fiduciary duty owed to TTL as its director and, against both IP and TTUK, on the basis of fraud or misappropriation of its property.
2. History of Claims.
(1) Hiring of cars. It appeared that there had been false invoicing in relation to, and diversion of funds through, three car hire and chauffeuring companies: Sardar Coaches, Luxury VIP and Chauffeur on the Net over a lengthy period;
(2) Y & S Furniture. It appeared that three payments were recorded as having been made to a furniture supply company which had in fact been made, or diverted via an intermediary, to IP.
(1) There had been a substantial drop from approximately £420,000 to £140,000 in TTL's VAT inputs between TTL's last quarter ending in November of 2007 and the corresponding period in 2008; and
(2) TTL's bank balances dropped from its approximate figure of £400,000 throughout 2007 and the early part of 2008 to a figure of £10,029.29 on 19 December 2008 for no apparent reason.
"To act as a single joint expert to report on the issues of loss and damage in paragraphs 5 to 7 of the Amended Particulars of Claim."
The parties instructed Ms Rawlins in accordance with that direction. She qualified as a chartered accountant in 1989 and is a partner in the London office of RGL, an international firm of charted accountants specialising in forensic accountancy work. Ms Rawlins prepared her detailed report, a supplementary report and her answers to questions posed by both TTL and IP on the basis of documents that she had access to. She listed these documents in a schedule to the main report and, in relation to documents that were subsequently supplied to her, she identified them in the relevant additional documents that she prepared. Her reports made it clear that she was solely concerned with the financial aspects of the claim and was not concerned with liability. Ms Rawlins's two reports and her answers were adduced into evidence at the trial and, in conformity with the practice for jointly appointed experts provided for in CPR 35, she did not attend the trial. However, as was intended by the order dated 21 September 2010, the expert evidence provided by Ms Rawlins's reports and answers was adduced at the trial.
3. General Approach to C's Claims
(1) Mr Qureshi had performed accountancy services for TTL for several years and was familiar with TTL's business and its financial systems and records. He was the obvious and natural professional for SA to instruct in order to investigate SA's suspicions of financial irregularity by IP in relation to the hotel and travel arrangements that IP had been involved in. Mr Qureshi was independent of TTL and there was no evidence that his relationship with both TTL and SA was other than that of an accountant acting for a client in a professional capacity.
(2) Mr Qureshi's reports, although prepared in a short period of time due to the intense pressure of time that he was instructed to work to, are objective, factually based and contain appropriate lists of the sources of information on which their contents and conclusions are derived. It was both acceptable within the rules of pleading and appropriate for TTL's claim when pleaded to incorporate the interim report into the pleading and to rely on its conclusions as the basis of the pleaded claims.
(3) Most importantly of all, the court had appointed Ms Rawlins to report on all aspects of loss and damage and that inevitably required her to report in detail upon the Qureshi reports. Ms Rawlins complied with her instructions to the full so that her reports and their contents superseded the Qureshi reports as the basis of TTL's claims.
(4) At the trial, TTL sought to advance its entire claim including those parts of its original claims that Ms Rawlins had advised had not been fully established for the purposes of an audit. However, its entire claim was advanced on the basis that it had been established on the balance of probabilities in reliance on the relevant contents of the Rawlins reports.
(5) Mr Qureshi's interim report was placed in the trial bundle as part of the pleadings and as a document that was referred to by Ms Rawlins but it was not formally adduced as evidence.
There is, therefore, no basis to the criticisms levelled against the alleged lack of both objectivity and impartiality of Mr Qureshi.
(1) Ms Rawlins was given access to, and she or her assistant inspected all of, TTL's relevant documents in its possession in both electronic and hard copy form that related to the claims being presented. She met IP both in his own capacity and as the representative of TTUK and TTL. She and her assistant were also given access to, and inspected, the accounting records of TTUK. Due to time constraints, Ms Rawlins did not review accounting records and bank accounts of any other company or party than TTL, TTUK and IP.
(2) Ms Rawlins then took each item of claim in each Type of claim individually and reported on each item by placing each item into one of four categories with a supporting commentary explaining her conclusions and annexing particularly relevant documents to support those conclusions.
(3) The four categories of claim were as follows:
(a) Category A. This category contained items of claim which Ms Rawlins considered to be supported from an accounting viewpoint following her review.
(b) Category B. This category contained items of claim which Ms Rawlins considered to be likely to be supported from an accounting viewpoint.
(c) Category C. This category contained items which Ms Rawlins required further information to assist her to determine whether money had been appropriated. Items in this category were, however, items which she assumed on balance had been appropriated based on the information currently available to her.
(d) Category D. This category contained items which Ms Rawlins required further information to assist her to determine whether money had been appropriated. Items in this category were, however, items which she assumed on balance and not been appropriated based on the information currently available to her.
4. General Approach to D's Defence
5. D's Partnership Claim
6. Type I Claims
(1) The two invoices appeared to relate to 2 separate payments rather than 4 as originally alleged by IP. Moreover, although these 2 invoices totalled 40,720€, being the Euro equivalent and the same overall total of the sums allegedly drawn out by IP in sterling, nonetheless these sums bore no relationship with the 4 payments alleged by IP.
(2) The two invoices appeared to be forgeries since the name of the street of the car hire company's address was incorrectly spelt as "Auberviller" whereas the correct spelling was "Aubervilliers". Moreover the invoices did not comply with the mandatory requirements that a French supplier of services had to provide when invoicing a client since the receipts were not numbered, the type of corporation supplying the services was not identified and the date on which payment was due was not given.
(3) The address was of a residential block of flats in which it was unlikely that the offices of a chauffeur car hire company would be located.
(4) The stated email address on the receipts could not be identified as being in existence using standard Windows DOS commands, albeit that the check was carried out four years after the purported dates of the receipts.
(5) The second invoice is dated 10 August 2007 but related to "Goods bought from Paris for guest – Date: 11 September 2007". This is an obvious error.
7. Type II Claims
"The payment to TET represented schools fees for my son. There were two payments and I made them in desperation because at the time I was very short of money and I was not prepared to compromise my son's education. I was mindful of the fact that thousands of pounds that I was owed in profit share which I had been promised but not paid, and I was despairing as to keeping up the school payments. I made the payments and I accept liability to account for this sum for the above reasons."
(1) There was direct evidence of two previous similar transactions involving the supply of furniture by YSF to TTL. In each case there had been a second invoice prepared on a TTL template and evidence that payment of the sum invoiced was legitimately discharged by TTL by cheque payments drawn on its account. The only difference was that the cheques in each of these two transactions were drawn on YSF
(2) Ms Rawlins had not been provided with any evidence that TTL had been involved in arranging lettings of flats in Preston for any of its student clients. However, IP produced evidence at the trial that there had been two lettings in Warton. The evidence was in the form of an email from someone based in a letting agency in the Preston area which provided the address of the two lettings in question and those addresses corroborated IP's evidence.
8. Type III Claims
9. Type IV Claims
(1) 5 Category D claims. Ms Rawlins had reviewed TTUK's accounting records and had not identified any receipts or bankings from these five clients. She also pointed to the absence of any confirmation from the respective clients that the sums in question had been paid and as to who the payments had been made to. Since no further evidence was adduced about these items of claim by TTL, these claims are not established and are rejected.
(2) Map Holiday – claim for £19,050. Ms Rawlins concluded that £16,381 of this claim was due to TTL, had not been appropriated by TTUK and could not be linked with TTUK or be shown to have been appropriated in any other way. No further evidence was produced by TTL and, in conformity with Ms Rawlins' opinion, this claim is not established and is rejected.
(3) Map Holiday – claim for £2,669. Ms Rawlins was not shown any evidence that this sum was due from Map Holiday or that any part of it had been appropriated. She concluded that this was a Category D claim and, in the absence of any further evidence, this claim is not established and is rejected.
(4) Al Mulla – claim for £5,388. IP accepted that he appropriated this sum through TTUK and the claim against both defendants is, in consequence, established.
(5) Dunya – claim for £14,752. Ms Rawlins concluded that it was likely that this sum had been appropriated by TTUK. She was able to establish that a sum of £14,752 was paid into TTUK's account in three tranches on 15, 24 and 25 September 2008 and that that sum was the same as the total of 18 TTL invoices that were dated on various dates between 11 June and 15 August 2008. Ms Rawlins suggested in her report that TTUK should provide confirmatory documents to support its bald statement to her that these 18 invoices related to cancelled bookings and that the payments for those bookings had been held against future reservations but no such confirmation was ever received. I conclude that this claim is established against both IP and TTUK.
(6) Dunya – claim for £15,792. TTL established that a total of £15,792 was due to it from Dunya during the relevant period which it had not received and Ms Rawlins established that 5 sums totalling £15,792 had been received by TTUK from Dunya on 19 October 2008. Since neither TTUK had provided details of the invoices against which these payments were made and Dunya refused Ms Rawlins' request to provide copies, I conclude that this claim is established on the balance of probabilities against both defendants.
(7) Sultan – claim for £16,597. TTUK's records showed that a sum of £12,560 was received in cash from Sultan and IP accepted that this sum was accountable to TTL. This part of the claim for £16,597 is established against both defendants.
(8) Sultan – claim for £4,037. TTL's records do not show that this sum, being the balance of the claim for £16,597, was paid to TTL but do show that it was due and accountable to TTL. There is, however, no evidence that this sum was received by TTUK. The defendants did not attempt to explain away this claim by showing, for example, that this part of TTL's claim for payments from Sultan was not due from Sultan or that there was a satisfactory explanation for why it had not been collected from Sultan by TTUK. Such an explanation was to be expected from IP given that he had admitted that the apparently related payment of £12,560 that had been made by Sultan intending it to be made to TTL had been appropriated by TTUK and that he was liable to reimburse TTL for £12,560. In deciding this part of this claim, I take into account that neither IP nor TTUK provided any explanation even though an explanation was called for by Ms Rawlins. I conclude that this claim is established on the balance of probabilities against both defendants.
10. Type V Claims
(1) Money due and paid to TTL and appropriated by IP and TTUK: £143,352.
(2) Loss of profit by the re-direction of sales intended for TTL to TTUK: £18,156.
(1) TTUK received £17,948 from two companies, Sultan and Almulla. These appropriations have been already been dealt with in the Type IV claims.
(2) The majority of purchase invoices were photocopies and many of these invoices were missing such essential items as the name of the addressee, relevant tax dates, accounts receivable numbers and guest arrival and departure dates. Further, when original invoices from the same hotel supplier in TTL's possession were compared with photocopied invoices in TTUK's possession purporting to come from the same hotel, many showed variations of style, content or format which further cast doubt on the authenticity of the invoices in TTUK's possession. The overall conclusion was that the extent of these anomalies was such as to throw into question the authenticity of all of the invoices in TTUK's possession.
(3) Certain invoices from World Avenues to TTUK were not genuine.
(4) Some sales invoices were missing and many did not link their costs to TTUK.
11. Set-off of Receipts from Omeir Travel and Other Debtors.
12. Type VI Claims
13. Summary of Findings
(1) £27,565.00 (paragraph 36 above)
(1) £1,700 (paragraph 38 above)
(2) £2,200 (paragraph 38 above)
(3) £30,375 (paragraph 44 above)
(1) £1,231.64 (paragraph 54 above)
(1) £5,388 (paragraph 57(4) above)
(2) £14,752 (paragraph 57(5) above)
(3) £15,792 (paragraph 57(6) above)
(4) £12,560 (paragraph 57(7) above)
(5) £4,037 (paragraph 57(8) above)
(1) £145,352 (paragraph 66 above)
14. Overall conclusion
HH Judge Anthony Thornton QC