Dechert’s attempt to withhold hacking documents fails

On 4 March 2025, a District Court in North Carolina was heavily critical of efforts from UAE Emirate Ras Al Khaimah (“RAK”) to seek to intervene in an ongoing case without appearing before the court itself. Last year, RAK was slapped with a worldwide freezing order in London, having failed to pay the approximately £21m that they owe from a number of High Court judgments.

Both cases involve Farhad Azima, a US aviation businessman who has been embroiled in a long-running dispute with the Emirate and their lawyers, Dechert LLP. In 2022, RAK fled their case against Azima in the UK, blaming Dechert for any wrongdoing and promising to satisfy any judgments entered against it. Despite this, two years later, the English Courts had to grant Azima a freezing order, saying that RAK’s behaviour “has been shown to be dishonest and since it has backed out of the proceedings it has failed to pay any of the orders made against it”. In further criticism, Mr Justice Michael Green also said that the Emirate was “taking steps to make itself judgment-proof”.

Despite refusing to pay what they owe, RAK have continued to be involved in other UK proceedings through another law firm, Allen & Overy. Through this firm they have sought to protect their legal professional privilege, which aims to ensure that any legal discussions between a client and their lawyer are protected, in a number of cases.

In a similar vein, RAK are represented in the United States by attorneys at Patterson Belknap, who have been seeking to protect their privilege in another case. However, they have refused to appear before the court in a case involving Nicholas Del Rosso, a private investigator that Azima alleges was a vital part of the conspiracy to hack his data to be deployed by RAK in legal proceedings across the world. In a letter, Patterson Belknap stated that they do not wish to appear “to avoid any further claim that an appearance in this litigation would waive its jurisdictional and sovereign immunity defenses”.

However, this has not stopped their efforts to assert privilege through other routes. They initially attempted to do so through Del Rosso himself, which was rebuffed by the North Carolina courts. Following this, in January 2025, the court ordered that RAK must appear itself to assert its attorney client privilege by 19 February 2025. Disregarding this, RAK’s attorneys wrote to Dechert the day before the deadline to request that they appear to assert privilege on RAK’s behalf, again seeking to avoid appearing before the courts themselves.

Dechert subsequently, having settled their own cases with Azima in 2024, waded back into the case to file for an extension of time to consider the supposedly privileged material themselves.

In further judicial criticism of the Emirate, the order stated that “RAK has had ample opportunity to make an appearance and then request an extension of time”, “and this court finds no reason to extend the time further in light of the opportunities RAK, and relatedly Dechert, have had to appear in the first instance”. RAK’s tactics have caused “unnecessarily delays discovery” and “obstructs the fact-finding process”

The return to a seemingly cordial relationship between RAK and Dechert, following the firm being blamed by the Emirate when it fled the jurisdiction of the English Courts, is perhaps unexpected. In his filing opposing Dechert’s motion, it was questioned “whether Dechert is belatedly inserting itself into this process to delay production of further evidence of its own involvement in the underlying alleged misconduct”.

Dechert’s efforts to secure the motion of time were described as “far from sufficient” to maintain an assertion of privilege, and a number of the “facts” presented were “at best misleading”. The Judge was critical of efforts that seemed to pick selectively from descriptions of the dispute by the court to support their position.

Del Rosso is now required to deliver the documents that he holds - and which he, Dechert and RAK have sought to conceal – to Azima’s legal team within ten days. RAK’s continued efforts to involve themselves in ongoing legal proceedings in both the UK and US suggests a clear awareness that the material that may be publicised through disclosure from Dechert and their other former agents may materially damage their international reputation.

More concerning is that RAK has, by and large, appeared to be able to do so without formally engaging with the cases and subjecting themselves to the jurisdiction of the courts. This latest judgment in North Carolina, however, suggests that they may have pushed this strategy as far as they can.

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