Dear Supporters

Due to the huge flow of new threats that I began to receive immediately after Lord Justice Bean from the Court of Appeal made obviously illegal decisions in favor of the Russian oligarchs, I decided that for security purposes it would be better to continue the series of publications about the decisions of Lord Justice Bean (by the way, I received the latest threats TODAY). 

A series of publications dedicated to Lord Justice Bean started on 26 August, and I called all my subsequent updates like this: “Lord Justice Bean: Any truth on awful actions/crimes of Putin's oligarchs is totally without merits”. For example, Lord Justice Been considered "totally without merit" two criminal cases (in England and Latvia) on death threats from Russian oligarchs against me and even my children. 

In these updates, I also referred to the fact that Lord Justice Bean made a revolution in law for the sake of Russian oligarchs. Here's what I wrote about this in the open letter to Lord Justice Bean in the section titled “Two of the most eloquent examples confirming that your decisions are deliberately illegal (in a demonstrative form)”:

1. I will not analyze your decisions in detail, but will focus on your two most egregious conclusions, which are at the same time the most important. If I read these phrases not in the decisions of a Judge with as many regalia as you have, but somewhere else (for example, in student papers), then I would simply laugh because of their obvious absurdity.
2. The first example is from case CA-2022-002495, in the decision on which you wrote the following: “Picken J expressly recorded and rejected Mr Sychev’s submission that the defendants had accepted jurisdiction: on the contrary, he held, they had each made a jurisdictional challenge”.
3. I think that any law student knows that a party's acceptance of something by performing specific actions is a legal construction that is used to prove that a party has accepted this something precisely against the background of a formal statement by that party to the contrary. (1) The existence of such actions is a legal basis for dismissing the party's formal statement to the contrary, and (2) the reverse logic, where the formal statement to the contrary supposedly cancels the actual actions by which something has been accepted, is a legal absurdity.
4. I am sure that Lord Justice Bean understands this basic principle fully well. I am also sure that if he were a teacher who heard such a statement from a law student, he would give such a student an unsatisfactory grade. But Lord Justice Bean is not a student or a teacher, but a judge who was considering the very serious and, at the same time, absolutely extraordinary case involving such monstrous things as (1) death threats from the defendants against the plaintiff and his children with a demand to drop exactly this English lawsuit, and (2) information about the order by the defendants to kill the plaintiff precisely in connection with this trial in England (these facts alone are a clear example of the actions by which the Defendants have accepted the jurisdiction; there were many other actions).
5. Moreover, the Defendants themselves refute the strange logic of Lord Justice Bean. I gave information about this in paragraph 52 of the Skeleton: “Now I will give a very colorful example when the Defendants themselves did not agree with the logic of Mr Justice Picken. This story is related to the hearing on 2 December regarding the Claimants’ application for judgment in default against the Second and Third Defendants regarding the Loan Agreements. The First and Fourth Defendants are not parties to this application, but they expressed a desire to participate in the remote hearing as observers. In the email to the Court dated 1 December, the solicitors of the Fourth Defendant wrote the following: “We write further to your email of yesterday and the email sent today by Simmons & Simmons on behalf of the First Defendant confirming that attendance at tomorrow’s hearing by representatives of the First and Fourth Defendants will be as observers. Our client will not be appearing so as to avoid any argument that in doing so it would be submitting to the jurisdiction of the English Court”.
6. Another example demonstrating that the Defendants themselves are well aware that by taking certain actions they can be recognized that they have accepted the jurisdiction is described in paragraph 78 of my skeleton in case CA-2022-002495.
7. Thus, Lord Justice Bean, without explanation and with surprising ease, actually revolutionized the law, abolishing a long-existing legal mechanism, the purpose of which is to prevent a situation where an unfair party, by making a formal bare statement, wants to completely renounce its previous behavior, which this formal statement contradicts.
8. Moreover, if we adhere to the strange logic of Lord Justice Bean, then the legal instrument in question (the acceptance of something by performing certain actions) becomes absolutely unnecessary. After all, if the party does not deny the acceptance of something, then additional references to actions confirming such acceptance are completely unnecessary - why (and where, if there is no dispute) to additionally prove what is already accepted and not being disputed. This legal instrument was invented just and exclusively for such cases when one side denies the acceptance of something, but the other side declares the opposite and refers precisely to the corresponding actions.
9. Such strange actions of Lord Justice Bean are especially dangerous against the background of the fact that the English law is precedential - for the sake to help the Russian oligarchs to stifle the lawsuit against them, Lord Justice Bean has created the precedent that causes big problems for an indefinite circle of bona fide parties.  
10. Additionally, in relation to this issue (accepting the jurisdiction, but for other reasons), I will briefly comment on the further phrase of Lord Justice Bean, which also struck me to the core with its obvious absurdity. The phrase is – “Mr Sychev suggests that this was out of time, but it seems common ground that the jurisdictional challenges were filed on 16 April 2021. This is within the extended deadline granted by the order Mr Sychev himself quotes: “The time for the Defendants to file the Jurisdiction Applications shall be extended until 4pm on 16 April 2021”. There is nothing more to this apart from a bare assertion that the defendants filed out of time”. 
11. Indeed, the jurisdictional applications were filed by the Defendants on 16 April 2021, but not by 4pm (as was ordered by the Court), but later. Moreover, the Fourth Defendant does not even deny that he filed his application with violation of the deadline. How, under such obvious circumstances, connected not with some complex matters, but with the most elementary (which even a preschooler will understand) - time - it is possible to declare (and - importantly - with the reference to me) that the applications in question were filed on time and that my statements about the opposite, based on the documents (where the time is fixed) and even admitted by one of the Defendants, are “a bare assertion”?!
     

With the previous update, I began a new series dedicated to the revolution in law committed by Lord Justice Bean, namely, for the sake of concealing which (shocking) facts this revolution has been committed by Lord Justice Bean. Below are relevant excerpts from my submission, which was before Lord Justice Bean. Lord Justice Bean was ashamed to even mention in his decision the facts described below.

The Defendants admitted the English jurisdiction after starting these proceedings and before being served
 

1. The next vivid and monstrous act of admission of English jurisdiction took place in 2018, when the lawsuit was already filed and serving on the Defendants by the main method was underway, from which they all evaded. I will specifically note that Mr Antoshin does not even try to dispute the fact of his evasion, and I pay special attention to this, since we are talking about a Trojan horse that acted on behalf of Mr Antoshin (possibly and even most likely by agreement with other Defendants). In this case, the Trojan horse was Mr Lushkin, who worked directly for Mr Antoshin (namely, in the company "Agroferment", which belongs to Mr Antoshin). During conversations in 2018, Mr Lushkin stated that he was allegedly unemployed (this was the reason for contacting me - so that I help him to find a job). But when Mr Lushkin contacted me again in April 2021 (on the eve of the deadline for the Defendants to challenge jurisdiction), he forgot, that three years earlier he had presented himself as unemployed, and sent me a document confirming that in 2018 he worked for Mr Antoshin in Agroferment, that is, he was deceiving me in 2018. 

2. In 2018, Mr Lushkin told me that if I did not drop the English lawsuit, I would be killed in Latvia. There were also threats against my family members and children. 

3. I have also stated this wild story in written and oral submissions for and during the hearings conducted by Mr Justice Picken, as this story is relevant both to the issue of jurisdiction (because it is a clear act of admission of both obligations and English jurisdiction) and to the issue of costs (as it proves the enormity of the Defendants' behavior). In the most concentrated form, this story was described in paragraphs 2-31 of my letter of 23 October (SB/19/138-147), with evidence (according to the criminal law standard of proof) proving that these death threats with demands to drop the lawsuit came from the Defendants. The same information was duplicated in paragraphs 9-11 of Sychev 26 (CB/23/456-463) for the hearing on 9 December. 

4. For clarity, I will quote some of the threats and demands voiced by Mr Lushkin:

• “Give up everything, you have two children, are you stunned?! <…> Drop all these court cases!”.
• “You don’t understand that you can be killed today or tomorrow, Igor?! <…> Especially since everyone knows that you are in Riga, everyone knows!”.
• “Stop it, you will save your life, do you understand?”.
• “Igor, I ask you: give up all this! Waive, I beg you! You will lose your wife and children!”.

5. Regarding this story, the witnesses from my side have given the following testimonies:

• Mr Stepanov (paragraph 101 of his WS): “Sychev, in about 2018, introduced me to an audio recording of his telephone conversation with Mr. Lushkin, during which the latter actually repeatedly threatened Sychev with murder in Latvia if Sychev did not drop his claim in England. I confirm that these are precisely murder threats and that the demand repeatedly voiced by Mr. Lushkin boils down to a demand to drop the claim in England”.
• Mr Celms (paragraph 8 of his WS: “Around 2018, I was present during a telephone conversation with a person about whom Sychev said that he was the driver of a former director of PhosAgro. Sychev said that his name was Maxim Lushkin. I personally heard that Lushkin said that Sychev can be killed in Latvia, since everyone knows that he lives in Riga. Lushkin said this in the sense that it will happen if Sychev does not drop the English claim”.

6. Fundamentally important in the context of this story is that the Defendants have not presented any counterarguments about it. If during the hearing on 9 December, Mr Antoshin's representative, Mr Swainston KC, tried to make some arguments about other stories, confusing the story of 2016 with Mr Kondratiev and the story of 2021 with Mr Bobylev (which will be discussed below), then Mr Swainston KC did not say anything about the story of 2018 with Mr Lushkin. I even made a remark about it (page 52 of the transcript): “One more word, if I may, because I consider it very important.  Mr. Swainston did not comment on the story of 2018, for some reason: there were threats to eliminate which were made by Mr. Lushkin”. But the Defendants' representatives did not express any arguments after that either and Mr Justice Picken, unfortunately, also did not ask any questions to the Defendants about their numerous threats and demands to drop the lawsuit.

7. As for the threats and demands of 2016, about which, as I believe, Mr Swainston KC spoke, apparently confusing the names of the Trojan horses involved in the stories of 2016 and 2021, his arguments (page 36 of the transcript) were as follows: “Mr. Bobilev(?) had nothing at all to do with my clients. He was a friend of Mr. Sychev's wife. Mr. Sychev says that he met him at a wedding and instantly recognised him as a criminal, so this person who is on Mr. Sychev's side of the fence is the interlocutor in these supposed recordings of threats.  It is absolute outrageous nonsense and it is a total abuse of this court to use these proceedings as a vehicle for these lies. That is all I have to say”. Probably, it is about Mr Kondratiev, and not about Bobylev, and this story is described in paragraphs 23-25 above. During the hearing, I made a remark about this (pages 51-52 of the transcript): “The transcript of my conversation with Mr. Kondratyev(?) is attached to my witness statement and it was clear that it was said that he acted on behalf of Mr. Antoshin, so this is the effect which is confirmed by audio recordings”. 

8. Our very first conversation with Mr Kondratiev on 03.04.16 began with my question (the 57th second of the audio recording): “were you looking for me from Antoshin? Kondratiev: yes”. In a minute (1:50) I clarify this aspect once again: “Me: is it about Antoshin? Kondratyev: yes, but it is better not to pronounce the names now”. 

                                            To be continued.