Dechert seeks to defend Privilege in Azima hacking case

Dechert are seeking to assert privilege on behalf of Ras Al Khaimah, the UAE emirate whose investment fund has been found in England and Wales to have “behaved dishonestly and fraudulently, obtaining judgments from this court by fraud and mounting a full scale operation to hack Mr Azima's private and confidential information”.

The case in which Dechert is seeking to intervene is against Nicholas Del Rosso, a private investigator that was retained by Dechert as part of their work for RAK. Azima has alleged that Del Rosso is involved in the hacking and leaking of his private information. On behalf of the Emirate, Del Rosso has sought to assert legal professional privilege on over 700 documents that Azima claims are related to this hacking.

On 27 January 2025, U.S. District Judge William Osteen Jr ordered that Del Rosso was not able to assert privilege on RAK’s behalf, and that the Emirate would need to appear before the court to assert privilege by 19 February. Instead, in filings of that date, Dechert sought to intervene in the case to assert RAK’s privilege on their behalf, having received a letter from RAK’s US legal team the day before. Dechert are requesting an extension of time to permit them to review the privilege log prepared by Del Rosso for matches with their own materials.

In Judge Osteen Jr’s 27 January order, he noted that RAK had been provided with a previous opportunity, on 27 February 2024, to appear in his court, and neglected to do so. Judge Osteen Jr stated that “to avoid any confusion this court will grant one additional time period within which RAK may appear”.

In filing their motion, Dechert have highlighted that RAK “seeks to avoid any further claim that an appearance in this litigation would waive its jurisdictional and sovereign immunity defenses”.

RAK have also sought to avoid the jurisdiction of the English Courts, despite bringing a claim against Farhad Azima in 2016. In June 2022, after Azima was granted the right to appeal the initial dismissal of his hacking counterclaim against RAKIA in March 2021, RAKIA informed the court that they would no longer be participating in proceedings but would satisfy any judgment entered against it. Despite this, they have not done so. A worldwide freezing order was put in place against RAK for over £20m in June 2024.

In granting the freezing order, Mr Justice Green stated that RAKIA’s “behaviour throughout the case 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, despite it saying that it will ensure that any judgments entered against it are satisfied”, as well as noting that it appeared to be “taking steps to make itself judgment-proof”.

In their letter leaving the jurisdiction, RAKIA sought to place the blame at Dechert’s door: “it appears that RAKIA and its officers may have been the victims of dishonest and unscrupulous former third party advisers”, referencing the May 2022 judgment handed down against Dechert and Neil Gerrard in the ENRC case. Despite this, and having settled with Mr Azima in the UK in February 2024 and in the US in September 2024, it appears that Dechert are more than willing to return to court on RAK’s behalf in an effort to prevent Del Rosso’s documents being provided to Azima.

In a Motion filed opposing Dechert’s request, Azima’s lawyers argue that Dechert are not entitled to seek to assert RAK’s privilege in the case through the law firm Hecker Fink. Azima’s lawyers state that RAK has now used four different parties to try and defend their privilege for over two years: Nicholas Del Rosso, Allen & Overy, Patterson Belknap and Hecker Fink. Azima’s lawyers state that, despite the order of 27 January, the latest brief makes clear that “RAK does not wish to be subject to this Court’s jurisdiction and to be held accountable for its acts and the acts of Defendants, Dechert, and their agents”. Azima’s filing claims that this “appears to be another attempt to delay the production of these documents without [RAK] appearing before the Court”.

In summarising why Dechert might be seeking to insert themselves into the process now, despite not raising any concerns around privilege at previous hearings that they had attended as a non-party in this case: “Dechert is the former, fired counsel to RAK whose former partners allegedly orchestrated the underlying scheme in which Defendants hacked and stole [Azima’s] trade secrets. This raises the question whether Dechert is belatedly inserting itself into this process to delay production of further evidence of its own involvement in the underlying alleged misconduct”.