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Sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska has asked London’s High Court to compel the intelligence arm of Sir Lynton Crosby’s CT Group to reveal information about the source of an allegedly forged document.
The application, filed on Tuesday, names as respondents: CT Solutions & Private Advisory, the unit’s founder Eugene Curley, and Leah James, the company’s former global head of intelligence.
The case highlights how London’s courts have remained at least partially open to Russia’s wealthiest businessmen despite sanctions being imposed after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Deripaska, the former head of Russian aluminium group Rusal, was sanctioned by the UK in March 2022. Under the country’s sanctions regime, law firms can apply for licences from the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) to act on behalf of a sanctioned individual or to pay an opposing party if the sanctioned client has to bear the costs of an application.
The application relates to an allegedly forged valuation report used as evidence in litigation in London between Deripaska and former Russian deputy finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin.
Last year, a judge said evidence pointed to the document being a forgery “designed to cause very considerable loss to the Deripaska Parties”. The judge ordered US litigation firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which acted for Chernukhin, to reveal CT Solutions & Private Advisory as the business intelligence firm that had provided the document.
The judge’s October judgment said that both Quinn Emanuel and the business intelligence firm had “serious concerns about the safety of the ultimate source(s)” of the report.
Quillon Law, which is acting on behalf of Deripaska in the disclosure application against CT Solutions & Private Advisory, said it was “operating under a licence, granted by OFSI, required to pursue this claim”. It declined to comment further. Quillon previously acted for Deripaska in the action against Quinn Emanuel.
OFSI is a unit of the UK Treasury, which declined to comment.
CT Group — which was co-founded by the former Conservative election adviser Sir Lynton Crosby — was previously named in court as having provided allegedly forged documents in two other unrelated legal battles. No finding of wrongdoing has been made against CT Group in those cases. The plaintiff in one of the cases tried and failed to unmask the source of the respective documents in court.
Curley, who had a three-decade career in the UK’s foreign service, and James, who joined CT Group from Curley’s former business-intelligence firm G3, have both left CT Group in recent months. Curley, now retired, declined to comment. James could not be immediately reached for comment.
CT Solutions & Private Advisory said it “relied on sources and whistleblowers in good faith” and its personnel “acted lawfully and appropriately and clearly instructed and expected, and believed, sources and whistleblowers to do likewise””
The company added that CT had taken internal steps in 2024 relating to how law firms “employ the litigation support that it provides”.
