Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz have lost an appeal against their High Court defeat by brother-in-law Vivian Imerman concerning confidential information that was taken from a shared computer system.
Lord Neuberger MR and Moses and Munby LJJ ruled that the brothers had been part of an “extreme case of wrongful access to confidential material” and that an August 2009 ruling that the material must be returned to Imerman would stand.
Lord Neuberger MR said: “What happened in this case was an invasion of privacy in an underhand way and on an indiscriminate scale.”
He said that there is a “realistic prospect” that Imerman could establish that the brothers and two of their co-defendants are guilty of a criminal breach of data protection laws.
Seven files that were retained by Withers, the firm representing the brothers’ sister Lisa in her impending divorce from Imerman, were also ordered to be handed over to Imerman’s solicitor, where they will remain until a further order of the court.
The dispute began in March 2009, when Imerman was evicted from his office in Leconfield House, London W1, which he shared with Robert, following the breakdown of his marriage to Lisa.
Imerman filed an application against Robert, Vincent and three others, claiming that they had taken or had been involved in taking from the premises information that belonged to him.
Robert, who has admitted to taking the information, said that he did so because he believed that Imerman would attempt to hide assets and financial information from Lisa in their divorce proceedings and wanted to protect her interests.
Lord Neuberger MR said that the evidence that Imerman was concealing assets was “by no means overwhelming” and that Lisa “should not be entitled to benefit in any way from the wholesale wrongful, and possibly criminal, accessing and copying of Mr Imerman’s confidential documents.”
A spokesman for the brothers’ lawyer, Zaiwalla & Co, said that Robert “has achieved much of what he set out to achieve, namely that the information in question cannot be suppressed by his brother-in-law”.
He said that the brothers were considering an appeal to the Supreme Court “so that their sister (and all wives like her) is allowed to resort to self-help”.
Following judgment, Diana Parker, of Withers, asked: “How can there be protection of confidentiality over those very facts that the duty of disclosure requires to be revealed on divorce?”
Lisa called the Court of Appeal decision “a cheat’s charter” and said she was “horrified that the Court of Appeal thinks it proper to make it so much easier for money to remain hidden – and to remain hidden from women, their solicitors and even the judges who are supposed to assess what the total assets are and divide them fairly. How can this be fair?”
Imerman said: “I regret that this matter had to be put before the courts. It has been a waste of everybody’s time and money, but I was determined that my private papers could not be stolen and the perpetrators allowed to get away without retribution.”
