A v Aziz & Ors

This is a very unusual case, both as regards the facts which give rise to it and in its interlocutory history and the course of the trial. It is not possible to address the former in detail until I have explained the latter and given some background about the parties. But it is necessary at this stage to set out the bare bones of the claim, which I can do as follows:

The Claimant in these proceedings, whose full name is Mariam Aziz, is the ex-wife of H.M. the Sultan of Brunei, from whom she was divorced in February 2003. She is resident in Brunei but spends a fair amount of time in London.

The Tenth Defendant is a fortune-teller: I will refer to her as Mrs. Amir, though she is also known as Mrs. Zino. She is of Israeli nationality but she was born in Iraq, and she has in the past had a number of clients and contacts in the Arab and Jewish communities in London.

Mrs. Amir and the Claimant met in a casino in London in late 2003, and the Claimant came quickly to regard Mrs. Amir as a trusted friend and confidant.

In early 2004 Mrs. Amir purported to introduce the Claimant over the telephone to a gentleman whose full name according to her evidence is Aziz Otman (Footnote: ¹) but who has always been referred to in these proceedings as Mr. Aziz. The Claimant and Mr. Aziz never met, but over the following months they developed what appeared to be a close relationship conducted by telephone, text message and exchange of gifts.

It is common ground that between May and November 2004 the Claimant made bank transfers totalling over £1.25m. which were intended for Mr. Aziz. She says that the sums were intended as loans, to tide him over temporary business difficulties. The payments were made under arrangements put in place by Mrs. Amir, under which the Claimant made bank transfers to the accounts of three companies (the Second to Fourth Defendants) controlled by a friend and client of Mrs. Amir, Mrs. Rahamim (the Fifth Defendant) (Footnote: ²). It is common ground that all or most of the sums so transferred were then paid out to, or to the order of, Mrs. Amir. She says that she then paid them on to Mr. Aziz.

It is also the Claimant’s case, but not common ground, that over a similar period and for the same purpose she made cash payments totalling just over £1m, together with various valuable gifts, which were intended for Mr. Aziz.

The Claimant in the summer of 2004 recorded for Mr. Aziz, and had delivered (as she believed) to him, two dictaphone tapes containing material of a confidential nature.

Remarkably, the Claimant now says that she believes that Mr. Aziz never existed and that the other party to most, if not all, of her telephone and text message exchanges with him was in fact Mrs. Amir, using an assumed voice; and that it is she who has had the benefit of the £2m. and the gifts and who has (or had, prior to the interim relief to which I refer below) possession of the dictaphone tapes. The Claimant says that she was finally convinced that this is what had occurred as the result of a conversation with “Mr. Aziz” (Footnote: ³) on 22^nd November 2004. The relief sought in these proceedings is the return of the moneys paid, damages and the delivery up of all tapes or other documents containing the Claimant’s confidential information, and permanent injunctions against the disclosure by Mrs. Amir of the Claimant’s confidential information obtained by her either in her own persona as the Claimant’s confidantor as Mr. Aziz.

The Eleventh Defendant, Mr. Ahmed El-Bergami, is a mini-cab driver who on a number of occasions acted as Mrs. Amir’s driver and who is said by the Claimant to have been involved in the delivery of some of the cash payments to Mr. Aziz and is believed by her to have been privy to the fraud carried out on her by Mrs. Amir.

Although Mr Aziz is named as the First Defendant he has never been traced or served. The Claimant settled with all the remaining Defendants save Mrs. Amir and Mr. El-Bergami at an early stage in the proceedings; and she settled with Mr. El-Bergami in the course of the trial. In the result Mrs. Amir is the sole remaining Defendant.

The Claimant. The Claimant was married to H.M. the Sultan for almost thirty years and is the mother of four children by him. It appears that she and the Sultan remain on good terms and she is described in the evidence of her own solicitor as having “immense personal wealth”. Her principal home remains in Brunei but she travels a good deal, and in particular she has a home in London which she visits quite frequently. I have the clear impression from the evidence which I have heard that she found her divorce from the Sultan very upsetting and that she has not found it easy to adjust to life as an independent woman, a role in which she has had little experience. She struck me as neither particularly confident nor particularly sophisticated. Her immediate entourage consists of a few old friends and members of her family, some of whom gave evidence before me. While I acknowledge that their evidence cannot be treated as independent, a convincing picture emerged from it (and indeed from her own evidence and that of Mrs. Amir) of a woman who was generous and trusting but rather lonely and eager for friendship.

Mrs. Amir. Mrs. Amir is a lady in her late 60s. She told me that she has lived in London for over twenty years: as I understand it, her husband lives in Stamford Hill, but they are separated and on bad terms – indeed I was told that he has obtained an injunction excluding her from access to the previous matrimonial home. She has a daughter, Mrs. Oved, who lives in Israel but who has been with her for most of the trial. Her first language is Arabic, but she also speaks Hebrew. As for her English, she asked for and was given the services of an Arabic interpreter for the purpose of the trial and complained from time to time that she had been unable to read documents supplied to her in English - although the difficulty may have been more with her eyesight than with the language. But she broke into English quite frequently, and was fluent though very ungrammatical; and it is clear from the evidence that she is well used to communicating in English when necessary. She is in poor health. I have seen two letters from her doctor, though they are not very recent. She is a diabetic and requires regular insulin injections. She has for some time had difficulty walking, apparently as a result of polio: she now regularly uses a wheelchair, though she says that this is only since the last two years. Her eyesight is poor, as a result partly of retinal damage due to diabetes and partly of cataracts: she can only read with difficulty, and she cannot write at any length (Footnote: ⁴). She has a heart condition. She has had at least two hospital admissions in the last two years, one being for a balloon angioplasty. Despite all these disabilities Mrs. Amir is a woman of forceful, not to say dominating, personality and considerable intelligence; and she retains a remarkable vitality. It seems that in past years she has been able to make very substantial sums from her work as a fortune-teller (I understand that she uses astrology, palmistry and “cards”). She has had a comfortable life-style and at one stage owned more than one property in London. She has been a regular gambler at well-known West End casinos. More recently, however, she has fallen on hard times, partly as a result of these proceedings and partly perhaps because of a deterioration in her health. She claims that she is now homeless, in debt, virtually destitute and seriously ill. She says that she has been unable to afford a solicitor, or anyone to assist her in translating papers, since earlier this year. She claims that for these reasons she has been unable properly to prepare for these proceedings. I have had no objective evidence to help me assess these claims. I suspect that they are exaggerated, not least because of the vigour and alertness which she has shown in her conduct of her defence at the trial; but I certainly accept that she is not in good health and that she is in very reduced circumstances compared with her position a few years ago.

The Earlier Proceedings. Before dealing with the history of the present proceedings, I need to refer briefly to the circumstances of an earlier set of proceedings involving both the Claimant and Mrs. Amir. Ultimately the issues in those proceedings are irrelevant to the issues which I have to decide, but it is impossible to understand the sequence of events without reference to them. They can be summarised as follows:

In early September 2004 the Claimant and Mrs. Amir, as co-claimants, commenced High Court proceedings against two defendants to whom I will refer as X and Y. The proceedings were conducted throughout in private.

The allegations made by X and Y in the proceedings included an allegation of misconduct by the Claimant. Both in the pleadings and in a witness statement the Claimant denied that she had committed the misconduct alleged. Mrs. Amir now says that that denial was a lie (though that was not of course her position in the proceedings themselves).

Initially both the Claimant and Mrs. Amir were represented in the earlier proceedings by Davenport Lyons (“DL”), who act for the Claimant in the present proceedings; and in the preparation for the proceedings it was Mrs. Amir – as much the more worldly-wise of the two - who took the initiative in instructing them and in taking other steps to gather evidence (including, it appears, making a clandestine tape-recording of a conversation with X). However, within a short time DL appear to have perceived a conflict or potential conflict, and Mrs. Amir has given evidence of two particular incidents which she deeply resented when she was told that they needed to speak to the Claimant in her absence and, later, when they told her that they could no longer act for her. On 1^st December 2004 they obtained the leave of the Court to come off the record for Mrs. Amir. Mrs. Amir regards DL’s conduct in continuing to accept instructions from the Claimant in the earlier proceedings, and still more in acting for her in the current proceedings, as professionally improper. (Footnote: ⁵) In particular, she regards the solicitor at DL with day-to-day conduct of the case, Mr. Matthew Dowd, as having poisoned the Claimant’s mind against her and as being the author of most of her subsequent misfortunes.

In due course the defence of Y was struck out and injunctions against him were made permanent. In May 2005 the Claimant settled with X on the basis of undertakings. Among the undertakings given by X was an undertaking by him not to publish any statement to the effect that the Claimant had committed the misconduct alleged. Mrs. Amir alleges that X was asked by DL to sign a document denying that the misconduct had occurred and that he did so, despite it being to his knowledge untrue, in return for a large cash payment. I have not seen such a document, but I suspect that what Mrs. Amir is referring to is the undertaking.

In July 2006 X was held by Gray J. to be in breach of those undertakings. He was imprisoned for three months and they were replaced by permanent injunctions. (Footnote: ⁶)

Mrs. Amir says that there are tapes both of the Claimant admitting that she had committed the misconduct alleged and of X saying that his statement she had not done so was untrue. I have seen what is said to be a transcript of the former, though the tape in question has not been produced. The latter was played to me by Mrs. Amir in closing submissions. (Footnote: ⁷)

The letter of 10^th January 2005. The Claimant says that as soon as she realised how she had been cheated by Mrs. Amir (which, as noted above, was on 22^nd November 2004) she refused all further contact with her or Mr. Aziz from that day, despite repeated appeals by telephone and text message. The text messages from Mr. Aziz have been saved and were put in evidence before me. They are in extravagant language: one at least contains a reference to shared secrets but assures her that he will be “discreet”. On 10^th January 2005 Mrs. Amir wrote to the Claimant reproaching her for ignoring her past friendship and services (particularly in combating X and Y) and for allowing herself to be influenced by “traitors”, namely DL. The letter then proceeded to refer to unspecified “information” in Mrs. Amir’s possession, which

The initiation of the present proceedings. On 12^th January 2005 - i.e. two days after the receipt of the letter referred to in the preceding paragraph - the Claimant obtained from Butterfield J. ex parte freezing orders against Mr. Aziz and the Second to Ninth Defendants. These proceedings were issued the following day. Mrs. Amir and Mr. El-Bergami were joined shortly afterwards – in Mrs. Amir’s case by order of Field J. dated 18^th January 2005. As noted above, Mr. Aziz has never been served. Mrs. Amir was in London at the time that the order was made joining her in the proceedings, but she left for Israel on 22^nd January 2005, where she remained until returning to London on 18^th May 2005. She did however serve a Defence, settled by counsel but including a statement of belief signed by her, on 16^th February 2005.

Anonymity. When Butterfield J. made the initial freezing orders he also made a wide-ranging anonymity order, including a direction that the Claimant be described as “Mrs. A”. The making of such an order was justified to him on the basis that a similar order had been made by Tugendhat J. in the earlier proceedings. The order was extended to cover Mrs. Amir on her joinder.

Interim relief against the Second to Ninth Defendants. The Claimant obtained interim relief against the Second to Ninth Defendants freezing whatever remained of the sums paid by her for the benefit of Mr. Aziz and requiring disclosure of what had happened to the balance. Mrs. Rahamim swore an affidavit giving the information required and explaining that she had allowed her companies to be used by Mrs. Amir as a conduit for the payments in good faith and without knowledge of any fraud against the Claimant.

Interim relief against Mrs. Amir. The Claimant obtained various forms of interim relief against Mrs. Amir from Field J. when she was first joined in the action. In summary:

Tapes. She was restrained from disclosing any tape recording provided to her (or Mr. Aziz) or disclosing the contents, or the nature of the contents, of any such tape. She was also ordered to deliver up any such tapes or copies of them to DL and was restrained from making further copies. I refer to this as “the tapes order”. Pursuant to this order, in late January Mrs. Amir’s then solicitors, Sebastians, delivered up two tapes which appeared to be the two dictaphone tapes which the Claimant had recorded and given to Mr. Aziz: see para. 1 (7) above. (Footnote: ⁸)

Disclosure of assets. A freezing order was made, limited to £2.3m, coupled with an order that Mrs. Amir serve an affidavit (a) giving general information on her assets and (b) setting out what had become of the payments. The order was subsequently continued by Cooke J. on 25^th January adding various other provisions, including:

Pressure to stop the proceedings. During the early months of 2005 pressure of various kinds was put on the Claimant and/or on the Sultan to stop the proceedings. Dealing first with the period up to mid-April:

The March 2005 fax. On 20^th March 2005 Mrs. Amir (who was then still in Israel) sent a fax to the Claimant’s solicitors in the following terms:

The April 2005 letter and tape. On 10^th April 2005 a type-written five-page letter purportedly from Mr. Aziz was delivered to the Claimant. The tone of the letter is sufficiently apparent from its first paragraph, which is in the following terms:

Further interim relief against Mrs. Amir. It appeared to the Claimant that the letter of 10^th April 2005, despite being in the name of Mr. Aziz, was in fact from Mrs. Amir. As a result, on 15^th April 2005 she applied for, and was granted by Roderick Evans J., injunctions against Mr. Aziz and Mrs. Amir restraining the disclosure of the letter and the tapes referred to in it or their contents and requiring the delivery up of those tapes and all copies of them.

Further pressure to stop the proceedings. Pressure to stop the proceedings continued following the order of Roderick Evans J. Specifically:

The text messages. During the course of late April and early May 2005 the Claimant received a series of text messages from phone numbers on which she had been used to speak with Mr. Aziz and purporting to come from him. (Footnote: ⁹) The messages were similar in character to the April letter: that is, they reproached the Claimant in extravagant language for her treatment of Mr. Aziz and threatened the exposure of details about her private life. Although they do not in terms demand the withdrawal of the proceedings they are plainly intended to put pressure on the Claimant to bring them to an end. They show an obsessive venom against Mr. Dowd. It appeared to the Claimant that the messages were in fact sent by Mrs. Amir.

The visit to Mr. Yusuf. In early May 2005 Mr. Pengiran Yusuf, who looks after the Sultan’s personal affairs in London, received a telephone call purportedly from Mr. Aziz: Mr. Aziz spoke “almost in a whisper” in a frail, feminine, voice. Mr. Aziz told him that he wished to have a private letter delivered for the attention of the Sultan: the letter related to the conduct of the Claimant. He said that the letter would be hand-delivered by a woman, who would call to make an appointment. On 18^th May Mrs. Amir (who had that morning returned back from Israel) telephoned Mr. Yusuf and said that she had a letter from Mr. Aziz to deliver. It was arranged that she should do so that afternoon. She duly attended at the Sultan’s London residence and had an interview with Mr. Yusuf at which she handed over what was a further copy of the letter referred to at para. 10 (2) above, together with an identical cassette tape to that which had been sent to the Claimant. She made it clear to Mr. Yusuf that she was seeking the Sultan’s intervention to have the proceedings discontinued and the injunctions discharged. It was Mr. Yusuf’s evidence that although Mrs. Amir started by trying to maintain the position that she was speaking on behalf of Mr. Aziz the mask soon slipped and she dealt with him for most of the meeting as if she were the principal.

The contempt application and hearing. The Claimant took the view that Mrs. Amir’s conduct as set out in paras. 10 and 12 above constituted a contempt of court, and an application to commit her for contempt was issued on 12^th August 2005. The application relied principally on the meeting with Mr. Yusuf, which was said to be a plain breach of the order of Roderick Evans J., but also on the January, March and April letters as constituting improper persuasion designed to interfere with the administration of justice. That application was heard by Gray J. over five days between 2^nd and 8^th November 2005. He found the contempts proved and committed Mrs. Amir to prison for three months, suspended for twelve months. (Footnote: ¹⁰) I do not need to recapitulate Gray J.’s findings at length, but the essential points are as follows:

He did not find it necessary to decide whether Mr. Aziz existed; but he found that, even if he did, he had had nothing to do with the April 2005 letter or (therefore) the approach to Mr. Yusuf, whose purpose was to deliver a copy of that letter. He held that Mr. Aziz, who had never been served with proceedings, had no interest to send such a letter; and that the terms of the letter itself and the entire sequence of events surrounding its despatch and its disclosure to Mr. Yusuf pointed to Mrs. Amir’s authorship.

It is necessarily implicit in that finding that it was Mrs. Amir who impersonated Mr. Aziz in the original telephone call to Mr. Yusuf to seek a meeting. I take this opportunity to say that Mr. Yusuf gave essentially the same evidence before me as he gave before Gray J. I found him an impressive witness and I accept his evidence.

Gray J. did not need to find explicitly, but in my judgment it follows from his findings, that it was Mrs. Amir who was the author of the March/April text messages.

In addition to rejecting Mrs. Amir’s evidence on the central issue of the authorship of the letter, Gray J. found her to have lied on several other points.

Gray J.’s further orders. In the light of his findings in the contempt hearing Gray J. also made orders on 8^th November:

prohibiting Mrs. Amir from disclosing to any person the April 2005 letter or its contents or any form of voice recording on which the Claimant’s voice could be heard;

prohibiting Mrs. Amir from initiating any form of communication with the Claimant;

requiring Mrs. Amir to deliver up all copies of the April 2005 letter;

requiring Mrs. Amir to deliver up to her own solicitors (at that stage a firm called Davies Simmons) “each and every voice recording on which the Claimant’s voice can be heard (and each and every copy of any such recording)” in her possession, on the basis that they would retain a single copy and pass any other copies to DL.

Further alleged contempts. The Claimant says that since the order of Gray J. there have been further contempts by Mrs. Amir. Specifically:

On 18^th December 2005 Mrs. Amir is said to have visited a casino where she believed the Claimant to be in order to try to make contact with her. The Claimant says that this was a breach of element (b) of Gray J.’s order.

In June 2006 someone sent to H.M. the Sultan an audio cassette containing material from one or both of the dictaphone tapes returned by Sebastians pursuant to the tapes order (together with a copy of a photograph of herself which the Claimant had given to Mr. Aziz); and a further copy of the cassette (and photograph) was sent to DL shortly afterwards. The Claimant says that the person who sent those tapes was Mrs. Amir and that she was accordingly in breach of (at least) elements (a), (b) and (d) of Gray J.’s order.

On 22^nd June 2006 Mrs. Amir wrote to the Claimant. The letter begins with reminders of past friendship and reproaches addressed to the Claimant for placing her trust in DL (and in particular Mr. Dowd). It then complains of her poor health and lack of funds and suggests that she and the Claimant reach “an understanding” in order “to avoid the scandal and suffering”. It concludes by asking for the return of £50,000 which Mrs. Amir once gave the Claimant in a casino. The Claimant says that this letter breaches element (b) of Gray J.’s order as well as potentially being a free-standing contempt in as much as it seeks to put improper pressure on the Claimant to drop these proceedings.

In July 2006 Mrs. Amir spent about ten days at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Nagm: I deal with this in more detail at paras. 56-58 below. The Claimant says that during the time that she was there Mrs. Amir disclosed to Mr. and Mrs. Nagm confidential information about her which she was restrained from disclosing by the orders previously made.

On a number of occasions between June and September 2006 Mrs. Amir telephoned the Claimant’s London home in order to try to speak to her. This too is said to have been a breach of element (b) of Gray J.’s order.

On three occasions between July and early August 2006 Mrs. Amir visited the Claimant’s home. On 3^rd August 2006 the Claimant obtained an order from Openshaw J. prohibiting Mrs. Amir from entering the street where the Claimant lives (or the street where DL’s offices are). Notwithstanding that order the Claimant on three further occasions in September entered the street and, in effect, picketed the Claimant’s home.

Mrs. Amir’s representation in the pre-trial period. Until April 2006 Mrs. Amir was represented by solicitors – initially by Sebastians and subsequently by two other firms, Michael E. Harris and Davies Simmons. She is very critical of the service which she received from at least the latter two firms. Since then she has been unrepresented – principally, I think, because she has been unable to afford legal representation (although she professes now to have no faith in lawyers in any event). For a time she was deprived of her papers because Davies Simmons were exercising a lien over them, though it appears that she eventually got them back. She does, however, appear to have had some non-professional assistance. In July 2006 Mrs. Nagm helped her in translating a number of the documents. In October 2006 she employed for a while a Mr. Thompson, who appears to have had some legal experience though not to have been a qualified solicitor. It was he who drafted the primary witness statement which Mrs. Amir served for the purpose of these proceedings, though Mrs. Amir claims that he never gave her a proper opportunity to approve its contents. That statement attached a prior, very evidently “home-made”, statement in poor English. Mrs. Amir told me that that prior statement was prepared with the assistance (remarkably) of X. Mrs. Amir also wrote a letter to the Court on 14^th November 2006 addressing principally the question whether the proceedings should be conducted in private: she told me that that was written on her behalf by a gentleman who accompanied her to the first three days of the trial and who was identified to me only as “Mr. Soheel” (though I understand that to be his first name rather than a family name).

Preparation for trial. The trial of this action was originally listed for early October 2006. At a pre-trial review on 22^nd September 2006 Calvert-Smith J. adjourned it in order to allow Mr. El-Bergami time to obtain legal aid. It was subsequently re-fixed to start on 27^th November 2006. The Claimant was served with the Claimant’s witness statements at, or immediately after, the pre-trial review. Her own witness statements, comprising her own two statements referred to in the preceding paragraph and what is described as a “deposition” from Mrs. Oved, were served on 25^th October following the making of an unless order.

The further contempt application. On 25^th October 2006 the Claimant issued an application for an order to activate Gray J.’s suspended committal order on account of alleged breaches of the various interim orders identified above. (Footnote: ¹¹) That application was listed to be heard at the same time as the trial, and in the early days of the trial I envisaged that I would hear evidence in relation to it at the same time as the evidence on the substantive issues; but I subsequently ruled that it should be dealt with as a separate matter following judgment.

Representation. The trial opened before me on 27^th November. The Claimant was represented by Mr. Max Mallin of counsel and Mr. El-Bergami by Miss Clare Roberts of counsel. Mrs. Amir was unrepresented. She had some assistance, of a “McKenzie friend” nature, from Mr. Soheel, who attended on the first three days, and thereafter from Mrs. Oved. (Footnote: ¹²) I was concerned that she should at least have representation for the purpose of the committal application referred to in the preceding paragraph, since her liberty was at stake; but my suggestion that she use the services of the Personal Support Unit and the Royal Courts of Justice Citizens Advice Bureau to seek assistance in obtaining such representation was rejected by Mrs. Amir in emphatic terms - she told me that she did not want a lawyer and if the result was that she was (unjustly) sent to prison so be it. The deferral of the hearing of that application reduced the urgency of the question of representation; but at the conclusion of the hearing I again urged Mrs. Amir to seek representation for the committal application.

Mrs. Amir’s conduct during the trial. Mrs. Amir’s behaviour caused serious difficulties during the trial. I set out certain particular episodes below, but her conduct was generally disruptive and discourteous. She was prone to interrupt the Court or other counsel or witnesses when something was said with which she disagreed. Her interruptions were emotional, noisy and often expressed in offensive terms, in a mixture of English and Arabic. They were also frequently repetitive, seeking to revisit matters with which I had already dealt. Even when she was legitimately speaking, she made life difficult for the interpreter and the Court by often speaking at speed and with insufficient pause to allow for what she wanted to say to be noted or translated. (Footnote: ¹³) She sometimes wholly lost control of herself. On two occasions it was necessary for me to rise so that Mrs. Amir could calm down. But I am far from sure that all her outbursts were the product of spontaneous emotion. She was mostly very alert to what was going on in Court and well able to calculate the effect of her actions.

Preliminary applications. Most of the first day was taken up in consideration of applications by the Claimant that the trial should be heard in private and by Mr. El-Bergami that the previous anonymity order be discharged. There was also an application on the part of the Claimant that parts of Mrs. Amir’s and Mrs. Oved’s witness statements be struck out. The second day I took as a reading day. On the third day I gave a judgment on the privacy issue. I directed that the hearing be in private and that consideration of the anonymity issue be deferred until closing submissions. I need not set out here my reasons for doing so, which are the subject of a separate judgment; but the essential point was that if the proceedings were in open Court the confidentiality of the contents of the tapes and of the other confidential matters disclosed, or allegedly disclosed, by the Claimant to Mr. Aziz was liable to be lost. It is for the same reason that I have provided this redacted version of my judgment. I declined formally to strike out the passages in Mrs. Amir’s and Mrs. Oved’s witness statements to which the Claimant took objection, which were essentially concerned with seeking to prove that she had lied in the earlier proceedings; but I indicated my provisional view that I was unlikely to find it necessary to consider the issues which they raised and that I would in due course indicate to Mr. Mallin whether he needed to cross-examine on them.

The Claimant’s witnesses. Between the third and the seventh days of the trial I heard the Claimant’s witnesses. In the case of most of them I directed that their evidence be elicited by examination in chief (although I made it clear that I would treat their witness statements, once formally confirmed, as also constituting evidence). I initially took this course because, given the extraordinary nature of the Claimant’s case, and the fact that I could not count on the witnesses being professionally cross-examined, I wanted to hear the evidence emerge in the witnesses’ own words. But this course had the additional advantage that it lessened the prejudice to Mrs. Amir of having been unable, as she claimed, to read the witness statements in advance of the trial (as to which see below).

Cross-examination of the Claimant’s witnesses. The Claimant and most of her witnesses were cross-examined first by Ms. Roberts, for Mr. El-Bergami, and then by Mrs. Amir. Ms. Roberts’ cross-examination was helpful but was limited to matters relevant to Mr. El-Bergami’s case. Mrs. Amir protested on several occasions that she was disadvantaged in having to cross-examine without having had a chance to read the witness statements. She accepted that they had been served on her several weeks before the trial, but she said that she had not been able to get anyone to read and/or translate them to her. These complaints finally matured on the seventh day of the hearing into what I treated as a formal application for an adjournment, which I refused. Again, I will not summarise my reasons here: they are set out in a separate judgment. Broadly, whatever Mrs. Amir’s difficulties, I did not regard it as in the interests of justice to grant an adjournment (which had not been sought prior to, or at, the start of the trial). I was not in any event convinced that her difficulties were as acute as she claimed - she often demonstrated a very good grasp of the contents of the witness statements – and such difficulties as there she may have had were mitigated by my requirement that the witnesses give oral evidence in chief. Her cross-examination was in parts ill-focused, repetitive or irrelevant and sometimes lapsed into abuse of the witnesses, but it was by no means always ill-directed: some of her questioning was pertinent and shrewd. After I made my ruling refusing her an adjournment Mrs. Amir stormed out of Court and did not return until the following day. The result was that the Claimant’s last witnesses – Mr. Abdul-Cader and Mr. Bateman – were not cross-examined by her.

The cross-examination of the Claimant. I should mention one complaint to which Mrs. Amir returned on several occasions. The Claimant started her evidence in chief on the morning of the fourth day. She was cross-examined by Ms. Roberts for part of the afternoon of the fourth and part of the morning of the fifth day. She was then cross-examined by Mrs. Amir for the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon. I had to intervene on various occasions to keep the cross-examination within proper bounds. Towards the end of the afternoon Mrs. Amir indicated that she had no further questions. There was then a short re-examination. I indicated to Mr. Mallin that I did not propose to release the Claimant because it seemed to me that because of the uncertainty as to the nature of Mrs. Amir’s positive case there might be questions which I would wish to ask her after Mrs. Amir had given evidence. Mrs. Amir complained the following week that I had cut short her cross-examination of the Claimant. I told her that that was not the case; but I said that if matters subsequently emerged which she believed should be put to the Claimant I would take that into account in deciding whether to require her to be re-called.

The Defendants’ case. I had previously made clear that I expected Mrs. Amir to give evidence before Mr. El-Bergami. That seemed to me both formally and substantively the right course. In the event, at the start of the eighth day – the Claimant’s case having closed on the seventh - Mrs. Amir, who had left abruptly the previous afternoon (see para. 23 above) had not appeared and Mr. El-Bergami went into the box. However, before he had had the opportunity to give any substantial evidence, Mrs. Amir re-appeared. I required her to call her own evidence. She refused. She relied partly on alleged problems with her health but she also declared that she would not give evidence until everyone else had done so. I told her that if she did not give evidence at the time that I directed she would lose the opportunity to do so altogether. I gave her time to discuss the matter with Mrs. Oved, but she persisted in her refusal, and accordingly the evidence of Mr. El-Bergami proceeded. In the event, I was prepared at the conclusion of Mr. El-Bergami’s evidence – which was on the tenth day of the trial - to give her a further chance to give evidence. After some prevarication she decided to do so. I took her through what I regarded as the central issues by way of evidence in chief. She was then cross-examined by Mr. Mallin. After the short adjournment on the eleventh day Mr. Mallin and Ms. Roberts announced the settlement of the claim against Mr. El-Bergami. This provoked a violent and angry outburst from Mrs. Amir. After a tirade against the Claimant’s lawyers and the Court, she threw the water from her glass across the Court. I rose. When I returned to Court Mrs. Amir had left. I invited Mr. Mallin to proceed to submissions. Mrs. Amir re-appeared the following morning, when Mr. Mallin was part-way through his submissions. I made it clear that her case, and indeed the evidence, was closed, that I was not prepared to allow her to adduce evidence from Mrs. Oved and that I saw nothing to justify me in requiring the re-call of the Claimant. I should also mention in this connection that Mrs. Amir from time to time expressed a desire or intention to call other witnesses. So far as it was possible to identify who they were, it seemed unlikely that they would be relevant. I told Mrs. Amir to give me written details of precisely who she wanted to call and why; but I never received any.

Closing submissions. I had been minded in any event to reverse the normal order of submissions and hear from Mr. Mallin first. I accordingly allowed Mrs. Amir to address me following the conclusion of Mr. Mallin’s submissions. Mrs. Amir asked to leave Court during part of Mr. Mallin’s submissions, and I allowed her to do so. When it came to her turn to make submissions, despite my making it clear that I wished to be addressed only about the issues which I had to decide she persisted in attempting to raise matters of no relevance – primarily her complaints against her various previous solicitors and counsel. Eventually it became clear that she was not prepared to deal with the issues in the case, and I brought her submissions to an end.

I have set out the foregoing history at such length both because various aspects of the interlocutory history are relevant to the evidence and the issues which I have to determine and in order to explain that some aspects of the evidence were not tested, properly or at all, in cross-examination.

I propose to set out the evidence by reference primarily to the Claimant’s case, and principally to her own evidence, since much of it is in fact undisputed. But where there is contrary evidence from Mrs. Amir or Mr. El-Bergami I will refer to it and make such findings as are necessary. I have not thought it necessary to refer to every twist and turn of the evidence: some points of no, or marginal, relevance were pursued by both parties. It is convenient to state now that I found the manner in which the Claimant gave her evidence frank and straightforward. Strange though the story which she told is, I did not at any stage have the impression that she was lying to me.

The Claimant first met Mrs. Amir at the Rendezvous casino in Park Lane in December 2003. They were apparently introduced by X. It is common ground that they quickly became close. The Claimant visited Mrs. Amir at the hotel where she was then staying to have her palm read, and they also met on several other occasions before the Claimant went back to Brunei in mid-January. After the Claimant had left London they continued to speak regularly on the phone. Among other things which the Claimant says that she confided in Mrs. Amir was “the circumstances surrounding my divorce from His Majesty” and the fact that it had left her feeling “emotionally fragile and lonely”.

On one occasion in late January the Claimant phoned Mrs. Amir and was told that she had a client with her. Mrs. Amir said that he was a nice man from a wealthy family, whom the Claimant might like, and asked if she would like to speak to him. She said that his name was “Aziz”, which was amusing since that is also the Claimant’s name. The Claimant asked if he was good-looking and Mrs. Amir said that he was: he was Lebanese, in his 30s, and tall with blue eyes. Mrs. Amir then apparently passed him the phone: putting people onto the phone with each other in this way was, she said, something of a habit of Mrs. Amir’s. The Claimant and Mr. Aziz then had a brief conversation. The same thing happened on more than one subsequent occasion, and she and Mr. Aziz exchanged phone numbers. (Footnote: ¹⁴) Thereafter they began to call one another frequently and a friendship developed. On Mrs. Amir’s advice, the Claimant did not at once tell Mr. Aziz who she was, because she wanted to be sure that he was not interested in her only for her money: she told him that she was a secretary from Indonesia. But in due course he learnt her true identity. (Footnote: ¹⁵) Their conversations were in English: Mr. Aziz spoke English quite well, though with what she described as a Lebanese accent. In these early conversations Mr. Aziz had “an ordinary deep male voice”.

This account was not seriously disputed by Mrs. Amir in her own evidence or her cross-examination of the Claimant. There were differences of emphasis and detail about precisely how the introduction took place - in particular, on Mrs. Amir’s account it was the Claimant who asked to speak to Mr. Aziz – and about the circumstances in which Mr. Aziz came to know the Claimant’s true identity; but these are not of great significance.

A time came in the course of February 2005 when Mr. Aziz appeared cooler with the Claimant. He did not always answer her calls, and when they did speak he told her that he had a problem with his family which made it difficult for him to speak to her: apparently (though it is not clear whether he explained this at this stage or only subsequently) his family wanted him to marry his cousin, Hend, but he did not want to, and in that context it was difficult for him to have a relationship with another woman. The Claimant was anxious that she and Mr. Aziz should meet but he always had an excuse. In late February or early March he said that he was going on a trip to Lebanon and Egypt. (It may be significant in this respect that the Claimant was due to come to London in March and in fact did so between 8^th and 17^th March.) When he returned they spoke again on the phone. His voice was different: he spoke hoarsely, in what the Claimant described as a whisper. He told her that he had been to see an ulama (a cleric) at Al-Azhar University in Egypt and had discussed his relationship with the Claimant. The ulama had told him that since the Claimant was recently divorced he could not develop a relationship with her until he had been through a “cleansing” process: this meant that he could not see her, or talk to her with his own voice, for a period of six months. He had taken an oath accordingly. The Claimant – as well she might – found this all very odd, but Mr. Aziz was very persuasive: he explained that a previous fiancée had died in a car crash and that he feared that if he broke his oath the Claimant might suffer a similar misfortune. The Claimant discussed the situation with Mrs. Amir, and she confirmed Mr. Aziz’s account. They continued to correspond by text and phone. The Claimant said that she would also regularly discuss the relationship with Mrs. Amir, who was able to give her some further information about Mr. Aziz and his family.

Much of this account is not disputed by Mrs. Amir. She claims to have been the confidant of both parties as the relationship developed and to have acted as adviser and conciliator when there were misunderstandings between them. But her evidence contained nothing about Mr. Aziz’s visit to his ulama and the change in his voice; and I infer from her cross-examination of the Claimant and her submissions that she disputes that part of the Claimant’s case.

The Claimant says that it was at about this time that Mrs. Amir gave her some photographs of Mr. Aziz. Her tentative evidence in the witness box was that it was in April, but if – as I understood – the photographs were handed to her rather than posted, that must have occurred during her visit to London in March. The photographs in question were produced in Court. They showed a good-looking middle-aged Arab man. It is common ground that these photographs were indeed given to the Claimant by Mrs. Amir. It is also common ground that they are not of Mr. Aziz but are in fact of a friend of Mrs. Amir called Dhia Abdulla, although taken some twenty years previously. Some time later in 2004 the Claimant in fact saw Mr. Abdulla at a casino in London. She was struck by his likeness to the man in the photographs and mentioned it to Mrs. Amir. She said that it must have been Mr. Aziz’s “Uncle Dhia” and later phoned to say that she had found out that “Uncle Dhia” had indeed been at the casino that evening. She warned the Claimant that if she saw him again she should not mention Mr. Aziz to him because of the family’s opposition to their relationship. They did in fact meet again shortly afterwards, when the Claimant was with Mrs. Amir; but, as instructed, she did not mention Mr. Aziz. However, in June 2006 the Claimant again saw Mr. Abdulla in a nightclub. She asked one of her assistants, Ms. Lan, to approach him and ask if he was Mr. Aziz’s uncle. He denied any knowledge of Mr. Aziz. Ms. Lan took his contact details and he subsequently gave a witness statement to DL. The statement confirms that the photographs were of him and the other matters stated above. Mr. Abdulla attended Court, but Mrs. Amir said that she did not wish to cross-examine him.

It is Mrs. Amir’s evidence that she gave the photographs to the Claimant because she had seen them when visiting her and had admired Mr. Abdulla’s looks so much that she asked to have them. The Claimant denied this account in evidence, and I believe her. In addition to the general implausibility of Mrs. Amir’s explanation (a consideration of, admittedly, less weight in this case where so much of both parties’ cases is strange), and my judgment of the Claimant as a truthful witness, I attach weight to the episode in June 2006: that only makes sense if Mr. Abdulla had indeed been identified to the Claimant by Mrs. Amir as Mr. Aziz’s uncle, and that in turn is hard to account for except on the basis that Mrs. Amir needed to explain his likeness to the man in the photographs which she had given to the Claimant. I should also say that Ms. Lan, who I judged to be a truthful witness, said that the Claimant had shown her the photographs in question and said that they were photographs of Mr. Aziz.

It is the Claimant’s case that at some point – she thought fairly soon after he returned from his trip to Egypt – Mr. Aziz told her that he was in love with her and that he was no longer prepared to marry Hend. But he also told her that this decision had created a rift between himself and his family, with whom he still lived. The Claimant said that she was “flattered but confused” by Mr. Aziz’s declaration, but the relationship continued to deepen. At some stage Mr. Aziz told the Claimant that his mother, who was called Leyla, and his sister Amina were secretly on his side, and he asked the Claimant if she would like to speak to his mother and gave her her number: they subsequently spoke on two or three occasions. Mrs. Amir confirms this part of the Claimant’s evidence. She says that both the Claimant and Mr. Aziz – to both of whom, on her account, she was speaking regularly – were deeply in love with each other; but she was aware of the problems with Mr. Aziz’s family.

The Claimant gave evidence of an occasion when she was having dinner at a restaurant with Mrs. Amir: she believed that it was in April 2004, but I think it must have been in June. She accidentally broke a glass and Mrs. Amir told her that it was good luck. Later that evening Mr. Aziz phoned her and told her that he had been in the restaurant and seen the incident. She asked him why he had not introduced himself: he said that he could not, because of his oath.

In late April/early May Mr. Aziz told the Claimant that he urgently needed money for his businesses – he said that he had interests in Lebanon and in Canada - and in order to buy a house of his own. If he had been prepared to marry Hend his father would have made a handsome settlement on him, but his refusal to do so had led to his being cut off. He asked the Claimant to lend him money, which he would repay out of the proceeds of a property which he was selling in Lebanon. She agreed to do so. Over the following months she made a total of seven bank transfers, to a total amount of £1,254,000; and she says that she also made a number of cash payments. Mr. Aziz told her not to mention to Mrs. Amir that she was lending him money, and she did not do so. I will deal separately with the evidence relating to the bank transfers and the cash payments.

Although a good deal of detailed work has had to go into establishing the details of the bank transfers, there is no dispute about the fact that they were made, and I can deal with that aspect briefly. The payments were all, as noted in para. 1 above, to accounts in the name of Mrs. Rahamim, a friend and client of Mrs. Amir, or her companies. The account details were given to the Claimant by text message from Mr. Aziz and she passed them to her nephew, Idris Ja’afar, who worked for her as an assistant and who effected the actual transfers. The first payment (in the sum of £100,000) was on 4^th May 2004 and the last (in the sum of £250,000) was on 1^st November 2004. The largest single payment was of £500,000, made on 1^st October 2004.

Mrs. Amir accepts that each of these payments was made. She says that Mr. Aziz told her that the Claimant wished to give her money but that he had no account to which payment could be made and that he asked if she could help. She accordingly approached Mrs. Rahamim and obtained her agreement to the use of the accounts in question. She says that she did not discuss the matter directly with the Claimant, since Mr. Aziz had asked her not to.

The documents obtained from Mrs. Rahamim and her companies pursuant to the interlocutory orders show that the great majority of the sums paid into the accounts in question were paid out again shortly afterwards by way of a large number of cheques in comparatively small amounts (mostly between £5,000 and £30,000) made payable to Mrs. Amir or to a wide variety of individuals associated with her – including Mrs. Oved and Mr. El-Bergami – or to cash. Mrs. Amir accepts that that is the case, but she says that all the money which she received in this way she passed on to Mr. Aziz. (Footnote: ¹⁶) I do not accept that that is so. She has given no particularised evidence of how such payments were made and has produced no documentary evidence of any kind. It is not clear why, if Mr. Aziz was expecting payments from the Claimant, those payments had to be channelled through Mrs. Amir and Mrs. Rahamim: it is highly implausible that a sophisticated businessman could not make his own arrangements in this regard. But even if they did it is wholly unclear why in that case they were paid out in the piecemeal way that they were. Mrs. Amir was cross-examined about this but her answers were evasive and frankly impossible to make sense of. She did in fact volunteer that she owed money to a lot of people, but she did not appear to be accepting that any of the payments were deployed by her in discharge of those debts. In my judgment the payments have all the appearance of being made for Mrs. Amir’s own benefit, to be retained either directly by herself or Mrs. Oved or to be used to discharge her obligations to others: in this connection I note that Mrs. Rahamim was apparently told that some of the payments were being made to Mrs. Amir’s solicitors.

The Claimant’s evidence about the cash payments can be summarised as follows. As with the bank transfers, each of the payments was made in response to a request from Mr. Aziz for a loan. He would arrange for a driver to call at her London home to collect the cash. She understood that the driver on each such occasion was Mr. El-Bergami, whom she knew as Mrs. Amir’s driver but who she understood also to work for Mr. Aziz. She did not deliver the cash to him herself (though on one occasion she observed him through the window and waved to him): it would be given to him by her house-keeper, Mr. Abdul-Cader. The cash would be in a box (a shoe-box or something of similar size) which was generally placed in a personalised “gift bag”, though on one occasion she put it in a new crocodile-skin case which was itself a gift. Most of these deliveries were made during the two periods that she was in London in the summer and autumn of 2004 - 6^th June-3^rd July and 16^th-28^th September. On those occasions she would make up the bag herself from cash which she kept at her London home, and would normally also put in the bag a gift of some kind. But on two occasions, one in July and one in August, she was in Brunei. On those occasions she sent Mr. Ja’afar to London and, as he confirmed in his evidence, he drew cash from her bank account there and arranged delivery through Mr. Abdul-Cader and Mr. El-Bergami. The amounts involved on these occasions were £140,000 and £250,000: withdrawals of these amounts from the Claimant’s account can be identified from her bank statements. The evidence that Mr. El-Bergami on several occasions received gift bags from Mr. Abdul-Cader was confirmed by both of them in their evidence and also by the Claimant’s adopted daughter, Amalina Abdullah, who sometimes acted as intermediary between her mother and Mr. Al-Cader, though none of them were aware of what the bags contained.

The Claimant says that she made a contemporary note of the cash payments, as they were made, on a piece of paper which she kept by her bed. She produced what it appeared from her witness statement was said to be that original note. But the true position is not so straightforward. It is clear on the face of the note that it started life as a summary of the earlier payments which she had made to Mr. Aziz (including both bank transfers and cash payments) - these are in blue ink - and that a record of later payments (though not of all the later bank transfers) had been added subsequently - these are in black ink. The Claimant readily accepted in cross-examination that that was so. She said however that the summary part of the note was taken from her original “bed-side” record, and I see no reason to doubt that that was so. This shows five cash payments, totalling £370,000. The further, black-ink, entries record payments of £140,000 and £250,000 on 29^th July and 16^th August, which are plainly the two payments effected by Mr. Ja’afar described in the preceding paragraph, together – apparently - with another undated payment of £250,000. The Claimant was cross-examined by Ms. Roberts about the two entries of £250,000; and it is clear that she has no specific recollection and is dependent on what can be inferred from the note itself. That is not easy to interpret, particularly as on neither version can the arithmetic be made to reconcile. On balance, however, having regard to the way in which the note is laid out, I think that it is more probable that the undated entry is an accidental duplication of the dated payment of the same amount. (Footnote: ¹⁷) On that basis the total cash payments recorded are £760,000. I accept that the note is a genuine record of cash payments in that amount made by the Claimant to Mr. Aziz.

The gifts which the Claimant says that she gave Mr. Aziz were as follows:

Mrs. Amir claims no knowledge of any such payments. She says that if they were made they were made directly to Mr. Aziz and never received by her. Similarly, she says that she knows nothing of the gifts, save that in her Defence she pleads that item (iv) was given to her by the Claimant to pass on to Mr. Aziz and that she did so; but that after the break-up of the relationship he returned it to her and that (as at that date) she retained it at her flat.

Mrs. Amir’s position in this regard is supported by the evidence of Mr. El-Bergami. He said that he had been introduced to Mr. Aziz by Mrs. Amir some time previously and occasionally drove for him. He had no telephone number for Mr. Aziz: when Mr. Aziz called him the phone always showed the number as being private or withheld. He never picked him up at his home but always at a particular place in St. John’s Wood High Street. On each occasion that he made a collection from the Claimant’s home he did so at the request of Mr. Aziz. He would take the bag to St. John’s Wood High Street where Mr. Aziz would be waiting in a blue BMW sports car. He would hand the bag to Mr. Aziz, who would then drive off. Sometimes Mr. Aziz would give him cooked food to deliver to the Claimant’s home: he would produce it from the boot of the car. He said that the Mr. Aziz in question did not resemble the man in the photographs produced by the Claimant (which is of course consistent with Mrs. Amir’s case).

I shall have to consider presently the extent to which I can accept Mr. El-Bergami’s evidence about Mr. Aziz. But I should mention one piece of evidence which appears to show that, whether directly or indirectly, Mrs. Amir did receive the benefit of one at least of the Claimant’s cash payments to Mr. Aziz. Both Mrs. Amir and Mr. El-Bergami gave evidence of an occasion in September 2004 – it appears in fact to have been 28^th September - when Mrs. Amir was gambling at a London casino and accumulated such large losses that she ran out of cash. Mr. El-Bergami was with her and at her request he went back to her flat to obtain fresh supplies. She told him that he would find the money she needed in a case under her bed. He brought the money back to her – between about £90,000 and £120,000 - and over the rest of the evening she proceeded to lose it all at the tables. According to his evidence, the money which he found was in a case which he recognised as one which he had collected from the Claimant’s house for Mr. Aziz (no doubt the crocodile-skin case referred to in para. 44 above): when he asked her about this she said that Mr. Aziz had left the money with her for safe-keeping. It was Mrs. Amir’s evidence that the money which she asked Mr. El-Bergami to collect for her was indeed money which Mr. Aziz had left with her (which she was deeply mortified to have lost), but she denied that it was in a case such as Mr. El-Bergami described: she said that Mr. El-Bergami was a liar and had been bribed by Mr. Dowd. She was asked in cross-examination how Mr. Aziz had reacted to the loss of some £100,000 of his money. Her answers were, again, confused and unconvincing and punctuated by emotional outbursts which I judge to have been calculated to deflect questioning. At one point she said that Mr. Aziz was “sorry”; but at another point she appeared to be saying that he owed her money in any event - though on further questioning it transpired that she was referring to a loan she allegedly made to him in December 2004, so that he could go to Brazil. I find her entire account unbelievable: I believe that the money collected by Mr. El-Bergami from Mrs. Amir’s flat on this occasion was indeed cash delivered by the Claimant to Mr. Aziz. The fact that that was so on this occasion strongly suggests that the other cash payments to Mr. Aziz also found their way to her.

As a result of information received from a Mr. Makari, who knew Mrs. Amir and frequented the same casinos as her, DL were able to obtain third-party disclosure orders requiring five London casinos to produce evidence of Mrs. Amir’s expenditure with them over the period covered by the Claimant’s payments to Mr. Aziz. That evidence, which Mrs. Amir has not sought to challenge, shows that between May and November 2004 she gambled and lost some £957,000. It is the Claimant’s case that those losses were funded wholly or mainly by the sums paid by her nominally to Mr. Aziz but in fact to Mrs. Amir; and that it is Mrs. Amir’s addiction to gambling which is the likely explanation for the fraud which she says was practised on her. There is of course some direct support for that submission in the evidence referred to in para. 47 above, but Mr. Mallin points out that this period of very heavy expenditure on gambling coincides precisely with the period of the payments by the Claimant to Mr. Aziz. The details of Mrs. Amir’s financial resources are obscure, but on the basis of the answers which she gave in the cross-examination before Bean J. - which were further explored with her by Mr. Mallin, through a barrage of prevarication and obfuscation - it does not seem that she had the kind of money from any other source to support gambling on this scale.

It is in the context of this increasingly close relationship that the Claimant says that she recorded the tapes referred to at para. 1 (7) above. Their content is plainly confidential. The tapes were recorded by her at Mr. Aziz’s request on two occasions – once in July and once in September (when she was in London) - using a dictaphone machine (or equivalent). She then sent him the tapes as part of the gift bags that Mr. El-Bergami collected as described above. It is her case that these are the tapes which were returned by Sebastians pursuant to the tapes order.

Mrs. Amir does not dispute the Claimant’s evidence in this regard, but she says that the tapes came into her possession only because Mr. Aziz gave them to her when he left the country in late 2004 following the break-down of his relationship with the Claimant: see para. 55 below.

The Claimant gave evidence of a number of incidents in the autumn of 2004 which, with hindsight, she regards as evidence that Mr. Aziz did not exist and was being impersonated by Mrs. Amir. I can summarise these as follows:

During the occasion of her visit to London in September Mr. Aziz phoned her to say that he would be sending Mr. El-Bergami round with some food to her home. During the conversation she received a voicemail message, apparently from Mr. Aziz. When she listened to the message she could hear Mrs. Amir arranging for “Ahmed” – that is, Mr. El-Bergami - to go to the shops in Kensington and buy the very food which Mr. Aziz had said that he would be sending round. She confronted Mrs. Amir with this, who became angry and said that she had been speaking to a different Ahmed. Mrs. Amir agreed that the Claimant had made such a complaint to her but that it had indeed all been a mistake and that the Claimant had apologised both to her – and, she said, to Mr. Aziz, though she did not say how she came to know of that. Mr. El-Bergami denied that he had ever been asked by Mrs. Amir to buy food in Kensington or to deliver it to the Claimant.

On another occasion the Claimant phoned Mrs. Amir in an attempt to get hold of Mr. Aziz. She said that she did not know where he was but that she thought he might be with Mr. El-Bergami: she complained that Mr. El-Bergami seemed to spend all his time with Mr. Aziz rather than her. But the Claimant thought that she could hear Mr. El-Bergami talking in the background and the radio playing, as if Mrs. Amir were in his car. She then called Mr. Aziz: she thought she could again hear Mr. El-Bergami and the car radio. She was puzzled, but when she later phoned Mr. El-Bergami he confirmed that Mr. Aziz had been using him a good deal recently. Mrs. Amir said that this evidence was all lies.

The Claimant asked Mr. El-Bergami what Mr. Aziz looked like. He said “a handsome Lebanese man in his 30s with blue eyes”. With hindsight she appreciated that that was exactly the description that Mrs. Amir had given: even if Mr. Aziz did indeed exist and had those features, it is unlikely that two different people would describe him in such similar terms.

On one occasion when the Claimant was in Brunei (but presumably about to come to London) Mr. Aziz phoned to say that he was on his way to her home, with Mr. El-Bergami, with roses for her. The Claimant phoned her daughters, who were in London, and asked them to keep a look-out for the car. Shortly afterwards one of them told her that Mr. El-Bergami had indeed arrived but that the only person with him was Mrs. Amir. Mrs. Amir said that that evidence was all wrong. She had once delivered roses to the Claimant’s house on Mr. Aziz’s behalf, but with a different driver, called Jerry.

On one occasion the Claimant was speaking to Mrs. Amir, who said that she had not seen Mr. Aziz for some time. But only moments later she received a text message from Mr. Aziz using Mrs. Amir’s phone.

In November the Claimant phoned Mrs. Amir from Mecca. She understood that Mr. Aziz was in Canada, but when the phone was answered it appeared to be by him, using his characteristic “whisper”. The Claimant was startled and asked if it was him, whereupon Mrs. Amir replied in her normal voice. She said that she had been told by a friend that Mr. Aziz was in hospital and that the Claimant would not be able to speak to him for a while. Mrs. Amir claimed that this was all lies.

The Claimant acknowledged that those incidents should have been enough to alert her to what she now says was going on. But she says that she was very reluctant to confront the possibility that the two people to whom she had become so close – Mrs. Amir and Mr. Aziz – might not be what they seemed. This also appears to be her explanation of the fact that she continued to make payments to Mr. Aziz up to 1^st November 2004, some time after most of the incidents in question. She says that she spoke to Mr. Aziz some time in mid-November and said to him that the six-month period imposed by the ulama was now up and that she wanted to meet him in London in December: if not, their relationship would be at an end. He said that that was not possible and they had a row.

In the light of all this the Claimant finally faced up to the possibility that she was being cheated and that Mr. Aziz might not even exist. On the evening of 22^nd November she telephoned Mr. Aziz, who was supposedly in Canada, from her home in Brunei. In the course of the conversation, she used another phone to dial Mrs. Amir’s home number in London. While she was speaking to him, she could hear a phone beginning to ring in the background. That phone was then picked up and put back in the cradle, but during that interval she could hear Mr. Aziz speaking on both her phones. She then repeated the process, with the same result. That convinced her that Mrs. Amir and Mr. Aziz were in fact one and the same person. She put the phone down. A few minutes later Mrs. Amir called her back. The Claimant told her that now she knew everything. Mrs. Amir attempted to keep up the pretence, saying that Mr. Aziz had just telephoned her from Canada in a terrible state claiming that the Claimant had accused him of something. The Claimant accused Mrs. Amir of having betrayed her. The conversation then ended.

The Claimant says that she was prostrated by what she had discovered: she felt deeply shocked and humiliated. It was the evidence of her niece, Ms. Hussain, who also works for her as a personal assistant, that the Claimant called her in the middle of the night in great distress and asked her to come round. She told her what had happened. She then took to her bed and stayed there for several days. Eventually she also told the story to Ms. Lan. I accept the evidence of both of Ms. Husain and Ms. Lan that the Claimant was extremely distressed at this time and for a considerable while afterwards: that is indeed confirmed by the contents of the transcript of a conversation between herself and Mr. El-Bergami with which I deal at para. 64 below.

Mrs. Amir acknowledges that the relationship between her and Mr. Aziz on the one hand and the Claimant on the other broke down in a dramatic fashion in late November 2004. But she attributes the break-down to the malign influence of DL and Mr. Dowd. It was indeed her evidence that Mr. Aziz returned from Canada to London because he believed that the Claimant had been having an affair with Mr. Dowd and that he stayed with her (i.e., with Mrs. Amir) in order to find out what was going on. (Footnote: ¹⁸) But it was too late. Eventually he left again. She understood that he had gone to Brazil. She had spoken to him on various occasions since then – including on several occasions in the last few weeks, when he told her that he was in Scotland and was intending to attend the trial – but she had no address or phone number for him. When he left, Mr. Aziz left with her a box containing the dictaphone tapes and other items, for her to return to the Claimant. (Footnote: ¹⁹) But she subsequently, returned them (except for some tapes) to a Mr. Ibrahim whom Mr. Aziz sent to see her in Israel in order to give her a copy of the letter of 10^th April 2005 to take to Mr. Yusuf.

The Claimant adduced evidence from a husband and wife called Mr. and Mrs. Nagm. Mr. Nagm is of Egyptian origin but his wife is British and they have been living in London for many years. Mrs. Nagm is reasonably fluent in Arabic.

It is common ground that Mr. and Mrs. Nagm became friendly with Mrs. Amir when she and Mrs. Nagm were in the same hospital in the spring of 2004. They then lost touch, but on 20^th July 2006, when Mr. Nagm had an appointment at the hospital, he and Mrs. Nagm ran into Mrs. Amir, who told them that she had just been discharged following an in-patient stay and had nowhere to go. As an act of kindness they asked her to come and stay with them temporarily while she found somewhere permanent. In the event she stayed until they required her to leave on 31^st August.

It was the evidence of Mrs. Nagm in her witness statement, confirmed in general terms in a witness statement from Mr. Nagm, that when she came to stay with them the Claimant had delivered to her four cases full of papers relating to the present proceedings, about which she was extremely exercised, and that over the following days she discussed the case with them at length and in detail: in particular, she asked Mrs. Nagm to read to her, and to translate, many of the documents in the case. Much of what Mrs. Nagm says Mrs. Amir told her, at least initially, is consistent with Mrs. Amir’s case before me: in particular, she apparently exhibited extreme hostility to Mr. Dowd. It was however also her evidence that Mrs. Amir gradually took her and her husband into her confidence and made a number of damaging admissions. Specifically:

She showed Mrs. Nagm tapes, one of which was she said was of the Claimant and Mr. Aziz. If that were true, it would indicate that the Claimant was in breach of Gray J.’s order of 8^th November 2005.

Although at first Mrs. Amir maintained that Mr. Aziz existed and that she was expecting him to return for the trial, she was concerned that she might not be able to prove his existence. She told Mrs. Nagm that she would be prepared to give her money if she would give evidence that she had met Mr. Aziz when he had come to see Mrs. Amir in hospital in 2004. However, after a few days, she admitted that Mr. Aziz did not in fact exist and she demonstrated to Mr. and Mrs. Nagm how she could deepen her voice so that it sounded like a man’s voice.

Mrs. Amir told Mr. and Mrs. Nagm that she had tried to blackmail the Claimant into dropping the case. She referred among other things to her visit to Mr. Yusuf. She accepted that she had sent – or, rather, had had sent - the text messages of March/April which were supposedly sent by Mr. Aziz.

As explained above, I required Mr. and Mrs. Nagm to give oral evidence in chief. The way in which they did so was not satisfactory. It is clear that they both had a deep hostility to Mrs. Amir, which is no doubt explicable if she had behaved towards them as they described but which was of a degree which raised at least the possibility that they might have been led into exaggeration, or even positive fabrication, in order to do her down – and, it may be, to present themselves in a favourable light to the Claimant in the hope of some reward. In addition, Mr. Nagm was clearly not at all well. Both witnesses claim to have been distracted by offensive observations made by Mrs. Amir in the course of their testimony, which the interpreter was failing to pick up or was bowdlerising in translation. I am unable to reach a definitive view about that; though I am bound to say that in the light of Mrs. Amir’s conduct generally I find it likely to be true. Whatever the reasons, neither gave evidence in a consistently calm and coherent manner. They did, however, broadly confirm the key points of their witness statements. In particular, they confirmed that Mrs. Amir had demonstrated to them how she could assume the voice of Mr. Aziz. The account of how she came to do so was not altogether clear. It seems that it originated in her showing Mr. Nagm “for fun” how she could sing Egyptian songs in a male voice; but that she then showed first him and then Mrs. Nagm how she spoke as Mr. Aziz. Mrs. Nagm declined to demonstrate it herself but described it as “a hoarse man’s voice – like a whisper, but hoarse”.

Mrs. Amir in her cross-examination of Mr. and Mrs. Nagm – this is not an aspect on which she herself gave evidence - did not dispute the broad account given by them as to the circumstances in which she came to stay with them nor that she had sought their assistance with the present case. She did, however, challenge the allegation that she had been rude and unreasonable as a guest and sought to suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Nagm had asked to be paid for putting her up and had been more than interested in assisting her with her claim if they thought they could get something out of it. Crucially, she challenged their evidence that she had made the admissions referred to above. She alleged that they had been bribed to give that evidence by DL.

For the reasons given above, I treat the evidence of both Mr. and Mrs. Nagm as regards the admissions said to have been made by Mrs. Amir with some caution. If theirs was the only evidence before me I should have hesitated to give it decisive weight. But it was sufficiently credible for me to take into account in my overall assessment.

There are some aspects of the Claimant’s account which are at first sight very hard to believe. I address those later in this judgment. But the Claimant and the members of her household who gave evidence before me – specifically Ms. Hussain and Ms. Lan, who I found to be straightforward and intelligent witnesses – gave evidence that the Claimant’s emotional state at this time, and Mrs. Amir’s influence over her to the extent that they observed it, was such that she was very vulnerable to a fraud of the kind alleged. The Claimant was, and could easily have been perceived to be, both naïve and emotionally susceptible. She rapidly came under Mrs. Amir’s influence, which was only strengthened by their shared experience of conducting the earlier proceedings. Mrs. Amir had a gambling habit, and there was undisputed evidence, from these witnesses and others, of her asking the Claimant for, and being readily given, substantial sums of money – though not on the scale of the payments to Mr. Aziz. There is accordingly nothing in the least implausible about Mrs. Amir seeing the Claimant as a source of further funds on a large scale but realising that there was a limit to what she could ask for in her own name. Her intimacy with the Claimant allowed her to appreciate her longing for a relationship with a suitable man, and she was well placed to construct Mr. Aziz in an image most calculated to attract her. As Ms. Lan observed in her witness statement, Mr. Aziz “ticked all the right boxes” to appeal to the Claimant. In particular, because he was apparently wealthy in his own right and had been attracted to her without knowing who she was, he satisfied her wish to meet someone who was not interested in her for her money. As both the Claimant herself and Ms. Lan pointed out, Mr. Aziz was, so to speak, validated by being introduced and supported by Mrs. Amir: the strange features of their relationship – in particular his reluctance to meet her and his use of a whisper – seemed less odd when Mrs. Amir confirmed what he said to the Claimant about them. The Claimant’s introduction to “Uncle Dhia” (albeit with the embargo on discussing Mr. Aziz) and to Leyla helped to reinforce the impression of Mr. Aziz’s reality. The Claimant says that when she and Mr. Aziz spoke they seemed to share all the same views and tastes – a compatibility which Mrs. Amir was well-placed to ensure. Many of the episodes which the Claimant describes – such as those in paras. 34 and 36 above – are, with hindsight, obviously explicable by reference to the fraud being practised.

Notwithstanding the settlement of the claim against Mr. El-Bergami, he was closely involved in the events which give rise to these proceedings, and he is the only witness apart from Mrs. Amir herself who claims to have met Mr. Aziz. It is accordingly necessary to say something about his relationship with Mrs. Amir. He has known her for about ten years and driven for her from time to time throughout that period. It is clear that for much of 2004 and well into 2005 he was used by Mrs. Amir for a variety of tasks and was trusted by her and closely involved in her affairs. Because of her inability to walk any distance she had to travel everywhere by car, and he was her first choice of driver. He would do her shopping and run errands for her. As noted above, he was one of the recipients of payments – totalling £10,000 - from the Rahamim accounts: according to his evidence he paid the money into his bank and drew the equivalent amount (less £500) in cash which he gave to Mrs. Amir. As also noted above, he accompanied her to the casino and she trusted him sufficiently to go alone to her flat and to collect very large sums of cash. Mr. El-Bergami is an intelligent man (he told me he had a degree in Arabic literature from the University of Alexandria) and his English is both fluent and articulate. Mrs. Amir used him to read and translate documents in English for her, including in connection with the earlier proceedings, and he met the solicitors acting for her in that case. When the present proceedings started he accompanied her to see her solicitors (even after he had been joined in the proceedings and there might have been thought to be a conflict between their interests). He also tried at Mrs. Amir’s request to obtain on her behalf, while she was absent in Israel in the first half of 2005, the return of a deposit which she had paid on the flat which she had vacated; and she asked him to pay various bills on her behalf, including at least one which she had sent to his address. It was he who drove her to meet Mr. Yusuf on 18^th June 2005. On one occasion – though possibly jocularly – Mrs. Amir offered his services to the Claimant to beat up X and Y. It was his evidence to me that because his car was old and in poor condition he was unable to obtain much driving work, and his work for Mrs. Amir was a large part of his income.

Against that background, there would be nothing inherently implausible in Mr. El-Bergami being complicit in a fraud carried out by Mrs. Amir on the Defendant. I should refer to one piece of evidence on which the Claimant relied as apparently showing that that was so. In March 2005, when the Claimant was still trying to make sense of what she believed had happened she telephoned Mr. El-Bergami to try to find out what he knew: she had spoken to him as Mrs. Amir’s driver, though they did not know each other well. He was unable to speak on that occasion because he was about to fly to Kuwait; but they had a conversation on 14^th March. The Claimant, without telling him, had the conversation recorded on Ms. Hussain’s mobile phone. (Footnote: ²⁰) The transcript shows that the Claimant was in a very emotional state and imploring Mr. El-Bergami to help her. He responded by making repeated promises that he would meet the Claimant and saying that that were things that he could tell her. He said “I want to tell you something”; that he was “sure I can help you … sure 100% I can help you”; and that “I promise you, I swear to you I get you out of it, but I have to see you”. He warned her that she might have a spy in her household and said that they needed to meet, without Mr. Dowd knowing. The Claimant asked him if he was still loyal to Mrs. Amir. He replied “no – until I discovered she was not what I was thinking”. A little later he said, according to the transcript:

It is important to appreciate that, remarkable though the Claimant’s story may seem, many of its features, including some of the most remarkable, are common ground between her and Mrs. Amir. Specifically, it is common ground (and indeed supported by the objective evidence of the tapes and some text messages which survive from the period before November 2004) that:

the Claimant developed a passionate attachment to Mr. Aziz despite their never having met;

in the context of that relationship the Claimant made the private dictaphone recordings with the intention that they should be kept by Mr. Aziz;

also in the context of that relationship the Claimant made bank transfers intended for the benefit of Mr. Aziz totalling over £1m.

The Claimant seeks the return of the payments, or damages in the equivalent amount, from Mrs. Amir on two alternative bases.

Para. 4 of the Amended Particulars of Claim pleads the representations by Mrs. Amir on which the Claimant relies as follows(slightly paraphrased):

that the person with whom the Claimant was dealing as “Mr. Aziz” was in truth a man with that name;

that he carried on an import/export business both in the Lebanon and Canada;

that he had fallen in love with the Claimant; had refused to marry Hend; and had accordingly been cut off by his family;

that he therefore needed a loan for his businesses, which he could re-pay from the proceeds of the impending sale of a property in Lebanon.

At para. 3 of the Amended Particulars of Claim the Claimant had already pleaded that there was no such person as Mr. Aziz and that he had been impersonated by Mrs. Amir. On that basis, each of the representations pleaded in para. 4 was necessarily untrue. But the particular representations are also pleaded to have been false at para. 8.

It is common ground that the first three representations were made, both by Mr. Aziz and by Mrs. Amir in propria persona; and it is incontestable that the Claimant relied on them in making the payments that she did. Mrs. Amir claims not to be in a position to comment on (4), because on her case she was not privy to the basis on which the payments were made. Her pleading (see para. 22 of her Defence) puts the Claimant to proof that the payments were loans and not gifts. But this was never likely to be a dispositive issue in practice. If all or any of the other representations were untrue Mrs. Amir would be liable even if the payments had been intended as gifts, since even as gifts they would plainly have been made in reliance on those representations.

If the payments were made as a result of misrepresentation by Mrs. Amir, she would be liable in tort for damages to the extent that the sums in question were not recovered: such misrepresentations would inevitably have been fraudulent. She would also be liable in restitution in so far as the moneys in question passed through her hands. The Claimant also pleads an equitable proprietary claim; but it is not clear what practical impact such a claim would have unless she is able to establish assets in Mrs. Amir’s hands which represent the proceeds of the fraud.

The essential question as regards the claim in misrepresentation is thus whether, to adopt the shorthand identified above, Mr. Aziz existed.

At para. 12 of the Amended Particulars of Claim the Claimant pleads an alternative claim in conspiracy. Mr. Mallin made it plain in his opening submissions that this was very much a fall-back, included against the possibility that – contrary to his primary case – Mr. Aziz was proved to exist. In that event it would be the Claimant’s case that Mrs. Amir and he conspired to defraud her; but the only basis for such a fraud would presumably be Mr. Aziz’s claim to have been in love with the Claimant and to have been cut off by his family as a result, in which case the claim in misrepresentation would still be good. In those circumstances I do not need to analyse this aspect of the claim further.

The issues as regards the gifts are essentially the same as those relating to the payments.

The Claimant’s case as originally pleaded against Mrs. Amir focused on the tapes which it was believed that she held. Thus when the Claim Form was amended to bring her into the proceedings, the non-pecuniary relief sought against her was the delivery up of the tapes, and of all copies of them, together with an injunction preventing the disclosure of their contents. Following the receipt of the letter of 10^th April 2005 the relief sought was widened to include an order preventing Mrs. Amir from

The tapes. Interim orders have of course been made for the delivery up of the tapes and all copies and preventing disclosure of their contents. The formal question is whether those orders should be made final. But it has in fact been no part of the Mrs. Amir’s case either that the tapes or their contents were not confidential (or were otherwise not entitled to protection on the grounds of privacy/confidentiality) or that she has any right to their possession. It is indeed her case that they were originally entrusted to her by Mr. Aziz in order to be returned to the Claimant. In those circumstances, subject only to the question whether there is an ongoing risk of disclosure, there does not appear to be any issue that final orders in the terms of those already made on an interim basis are appropriate to be made.

Other confidential information. The Claimantgave no evidence about the information contained in the letter of 10^th April 2005 referred to above, beyond the very general statement recited in para. 29 above; but I do not believe that she needed to. It is quite plainly confidential in character: Mr. Mallin referred me to more recent authority, specifically Campbell v. MGN Ltd. [2004] 2 A.C. 457. It is not necessary for the Court to make any finding as to whether the information is in fact true: see McKennitt v. Ash [2006] EWCA (Civ) 1714. Whether the information was disclosed (if it was disclosed at all) to Mr. Aziz or to Mrs. Amir in propria persona,it was plainly not disclosed in circumstances which deprived it of its confidential character. Again, Mrs. Amir has not sought to suggest otherwise. In so far as she has a case in relation to this aspect of the relief sought against her, it could only be that there is no need for injunctive relief since the letter of 10^th April 2005 was written not by her but by Mr. Aziz and there is accordingly no evidence of any attempt by her to breach the Claimant’s confidence. She has not in fact sought expressly to make that point, but it would in any event be hopeless in view of Gray J.’s finding (and mine) that she was the author of the letter. Accordingly – subject, again, to whether there remains an ongoing risk of disclosure - the interim orders made in relation to this information also can be made final.

In short, it does not appear to me that there is in fact any real issue as to whether the relief sought in relation to the tapes and the other confidential information should be granted. The Claimant’s case in these respects would be even clearer if Mr. Aziz does not exist, but I need not on this aspect make any finding to that effect.

I turn to the fundamental issue of whether Mr. Aziz in fact existed, in the sense defined at para. 67 above.

There are in my judgment a number of very powerful reasons, even putting to one side the disputed parts of the evidence of the Claimant and her witnesses, to believe that Mr. Aziz did not exist and that he was impersonated by Mrs. Amir with a view to extracting money from the Claimant. They are as follows:

It is truly remarkable that if Mr. Aziz really exists Mrs. Amir has been able to produce no objective evidence of his existence. She has not been able to produce either a single independent document evidencing his existence or any independent person who claims to have met him or to know anything about him. Although latterly she has been unrepresented, she was in the early stages of this litigation represented by solicitors who would have been well able to make any inquiries on her behalf in order to obtain such evidence. It is also noteworthy that such limited information as she has been prepared to give about him is vague and wholly unverifiable. We are told his name and that of his mother and sister and that his family lived in St. John’s Wood. We are told that he had business interests in Lebanon and Canada. In cross-examination Mrs. Amir also volunteered a date of birth and, for the first time, that Mr. Aziz had a housekeeper called Saeed and a secretary (from Manchester) called Stuart; but no further details of either were forthcoming. That is essentially the sum total of it. It is hard to believe that if Mrs. Amir had known Mr. Aziz for years as a friend and client – having met him, as she said in cross-examination, at least twenty times – and kept in touch with him until the weeks before the trial she would not have been able to provide a great deal more information about him.

The money paid by bank transfer to Mr. Aziz can be demonstrated to have been paid in the first instance to Mrs. Amir. There is no evidence whatever, apart from her bare assertion, that she paid it on to Mr. Aziz. On the contrary, it was disbursed to her and her associates in a way which is wholly inconsistent with an intention to pay it on to anyone else. The cash payments were delivered to Mr. El-Bergami, who was regularly used by her as a driver and assistant and was closely associated with her activities. (It is true that Mr. El-Bergami claims to have delivered to Mr. Aziz the items which he collected: I consider this aspect at para. 89 below.) There is strong suggestive evidence that much of the money received by either or both of these routes was spent by Mrs. Amir on gambling. It is inconceivable that if Mr. Aziz existed he would not have objected to the money which the Claimant intended for him being diverted in this way.

If Mrs. Amir gave the Claimant photographs of Mr. Abdulla on the basis that they were in fact photographs of Mr. Aziz, that is hardly explicable on any other basis than that she was cheating her. It is true that the evidence that she did so depends on the Claimant’s testimony; but that testimony was supported by her reaction when she saw Mr. Abdulla in early 2006, which is unchallenged.

Mrs. Amir has already been held by Gray J. to have pretended to be Mr. Aziz in writing the letter of 10^th April 2005. I am, as I have said, bound by that finding; but I have made it clear that it corresponds with the finding that I would myself have made, and I regard the grounds which he gives for his finding as unassailable. The entire campaign in the course of 2005 designed to get the Claimant to abandon these proceedings, including the sending of the text messages of March/April 2005 and the arrangements for the visit to Mr. Yusuf, was carried out by Mrs. Amir. If she were impersonating Mr. Aziz in 2005 that makes it the more likely that she was also doing so in 2004.

In addition to those matters there is of course the evidence of the Claimant herself about the incidents reviewed at para. 51 above and about the final episode in which she satisfied herself that Mrs. Amir was impersonating Mr. Aziz. Although her evidence about those incidents is disputed by Mrs. Amir, it was circumstantial and self-consistent and of a kind which I find it hard to conceive of the Claimant having invented. As I have said, I found the manner in which the Claimant gave her evidence convincing, and the evidence about her distress at the time is also compelling. I should say, since it is a matter to which Mrs. Amir attaches great importance, that even if I had believed that the Claimant had not told the truth about the misconduct alleged in the earlier proceedings, I should not have regarded that as necessarily undermining her credibility as a witness before me: the circumstances of that lie, if it was one, were very different from the circumstances of the present case. In the event, however, I am not in a position to find that she did lie. She denied doing so when cross-examined by Mrs. Amir. I have only Mrs. Amir’s assertion to the contrary. Quite apart from the fact that that is the opposite of the position which she adopted in the earlier proceedings, I could give little weight to her assertion when set against the Claimant’s denial and X’s formal statement to the Court. Even if Mrs. Amir had not by her conduct at the trial lost the opportunity to seek to introduce further evidence on the issue, I would not have regarded it as right to conduct an elaborate collateral enquiry on an issue going only to credit.

There is also the evidence of Mr. and Mrs. Nagm about the admissions allegedly made to them. I have expressed my caution about relying on their evidence; but in circumstances where it is in fact consistent with much other evidence before me I am entitled to give it weight.

In so far as it is necessary to compare the credibility of the Claimant and her witnesses, taken as a whole, against that of Mrs. Amir, I have no hesitation in preferring the former. The way in which Mrs. Amir gave her evidence was such that I could have no confidence in her truthfulness. She has already been held by Gray J. to have lied about her authorship of the letter of 10^th April 2005 and about a number of associated matters, and I agree entirely with his conclusion. Her conduct in that episode shows her to be both cunning and unscrupulous. I have no doubt that she is perfectly capable of devising a scheme to defraud the Claimant and would have had no compunction about doing so. She is patently a dishonest person.

As against those points, there are three which weigh in the opposite balance.

First, and most powerfully, it is at first blush barely credible that the Claimant could have been deceived in the way that she claims. Probably the most incredible element in her account is that she could for many months have had a series of conversations with a woman in the belief that she was in fact talking to a man. Such things happen in Elizabethan drama but not, one might think, in real life. That basic implausibility is compounded by the very odd feature of the alleged change in Mr. Aziz’s voice. It is less difficult, in principle, to accept that someone might be deceived as to the gender of another person speaking in an avowedly abnormal voice such as that which Mr. Aziz is said to have adopted after his return from Egypt. But the explanation which the Claimant says that she was given for Mr. Aziz using such a voice is so odd that it is not easy to believe that it could have been offered or accepted. And what is to be made of the Claimant’s evidence that in her initial conversations with Mr. Aziz he used a normal deep male voice and that she even now believes that she was at that stage talking to a man and not to Mrs. Amir ? She also said in evidence that in her conversations with Leyla, Mr. Aziz’s mother, the voice she was speaking to was totally different from Mrs. Amir’s and that she does not even now believe that it was Mrs. Amir impersonating her. (I should note, however, that the fact that the Claimant gave this evidence, which patently only creates difficulties for her case, reinforces my assessment of her as an honest witness.)

Mrs. Amir suggested a further implausibility, namely that she – with her broken English – could not have spoken the quality of English which the Claimant attributed to Mr. Aziz. I am less impressed by that particular point. It is clear from the text messages sent by Mr. Aziz that his English was not that good, and it is certainly no better than that used by Mrs. Amir in the texts sent by her in propria persona. Neither the Claimant nor the purported Mr. Aziz had English as a first language, and I do not believe that it would have been beyond Mrs. Amir to sustain a credible level of English.

I have found this the most puzzling aspect of the case; but in the end I do not think that, real though the difficulty is, it is decisive against the Claimant’s case. Mrs. Amir’s natural voice, as I heard it in Court, is fairly deep; and I do not find it hard to believe (even apart from the evidence of Mr. and Mrs. Nagm) that she could produce a reasonable approximation of a man’s voice (and, in particular, a hoarse or whispering voice), which might deceive the trusting or unwary, particularly over the telephone. It remains of course very surprising that she could successfully maintain the deception over so long a period. But she would have been helped by the vulnerable state in which the Claimant found herself in early 2004. She was, as I have said, lonely, inexperienced and eager for some new relationship to fill the gap left by her divorce: that is indeed demonstrated by the very fact, which is common ground, that she should have entered into a close relationship with a man whom she never met. I do not find it impossible to believe that in that state she was able to accept things which in more normal circumstances she would certainly have questioned.

There remains the problem of the “normal deep male voice” used in the early conversations. That is explicable only on the basis either that that voice too was assumed by Mrs. Amir, but that she since modified it (perhaps because she found it too difficult to sustain), or that there was originally a genuine male “Mr. Aziz”, albeit not with the full characteristics she later attributed to him, whom Mrs. Amir introduced to the Claimant speculatively – or perhaps even innocently – but whose persona she later decided to adopt when she saw the opportunity of exploiting the relationship. Neither explanation seems to me impossible, although the latter is the more probable. There are the same two possibilities about “Leyla” – that is, that Mrs. Amir used an accomplice or that she adopted a different voce – but here it seems to me more probable (despite the Claimant’s belief to the contrary) that she was impersonated by Mrs. Amir.

Secondly, it might be thought that Mrs. Amir cannot seriously have expected any such deception to work, and that if she had really embarked on the course alleged she would certainly not have taken the risks that she did - for example, giving the Claimant photographs of Mr. Abdulla, whom she might well meet (as indeed she did) - or have made the foolish mistakes which finally raised the Claimant’s doubts. In any event, sooner or later the continuing invisibility of Mr. Aziz was likely to lead to her bluff being called. I am less impressed by this objection. Fortune-tellers are likely to be good practical psychologists and to have a good understanding of human suggestibility, not to say gullibility. Mrs. Amir is in my judgment an extremely shrewd and manipulative woman. Her gambling habit gave her a pressing need for money. She is bold and not afraid to take chances, as her visit to Mr. Yusuf demonstrates. I have no difficulty in accepting that if she thought that there was a reasonable chance of extracting money from the Claimant by a fraud of the kind alleged she would have been prepared to take it and to trust herself to get out of any difficulties that might ensue, by blackmail if necessary. As regards her mistakes, it is common enough for successful fraudsters to become lazy.

Thirdly, there is the evidence of Mr. El-Bergami of his own contacts with Mr. Aziz. But I cannot give that any decisive weight. Although Mr. El-Bergami gave his evidence engagingly and without any obvious signs that he was not telling the truth, the closeness of his association with Mrs. Amir necessarily makes his account suspect; and the conversation with the Claimant reviewed at para. 64 above reinforces the suspicion. It is also to be observed that his account of his dealings with Mr. Aziz is not particularly plausible. He, like Mrs. Amir, can tell us almost nothing about Mr. Aziz. It is hard to see why the deliveries of the gift bags should invariably have been made to Mr. Aziz in his car in St. John’s Wood High Street rather than at his home or an office; but of course such an account relieves Mr. El-Bergami of having to give an address for him which would be capable of being checked.

I do not therefore believe that the objections reviewed above outweigh the otherwise compelling reasons for concluding that Mr. Aziz does not exist and thus that the payments made by the Claimant, and the gifts given by her, on the basis that they were being made or given to him were in fact being made for the exclusive benefit of Mrs. Amir. I am aware of the heavy burden of proof on a claimant alleging fraud; but in my judgment it is discharged in this case.

The payments. Whether the claim is formulated in restitution or by way of damages for deceit, the principal sum to which the Claimant is entitled by way of judgment must be the same, namely the amount of the payments made to Mr. Aziz, less any recoveries. The total of the payments is, on my findings, £2,040,000 (being £1,254,000 in relation to the bank transfers and £760,000 in relation to the cash payments). I am not at present clear as to whether any amount has been definitively recovered as a result of the freezing orders obtained by the Claimant, i.e. as opposed to being held pending the outcome of these proceedings: in the latter case, I will order that they be paid out to the Claimant in part-satisfaction of the judgment debt. The Claimant is entitled to interest on the sums in question from the date that they were first paid out. As regards the cash payments other than the two arranged by Mr. Ja’afar, precise payment dates are not known. Justice will be sufficiently done if they are treated, for the purpose of the interest calculation, as having been made on 1^st September 2004.

The gifts. In so far as a claim is being advanced for damagesin relation to the value of the gifts I do not believe that it would be right for me to make an award in the full sum claimed – namely £360,000 – on the basis of the very broad-brush evidence about value summarised in para. 44 above. I proposed to Mr. Mallin in the course of his closing submissions that that difficulty might be avoided by my making at this stage only an order for the delivery up of the gifts; but he declined to take that route and made it clear that the Claimant is seeking only an order for damages. In those circumstances I must do my best on the evidence which I have. I am prepared to accept the Claimant’s evidence about the price of the two items to which she attributed a price. It is not very satisfactory to do so without receipts or invoices, but the Claimant was not cross-examined about this, and I accept that these were items whose price she is likely to have remembered. But I am prepared only to ascribe a value of £10,000 to the other items, being my best estimate of the least sum that items of the kind described might be worth. I do not doubt that they were probably worth much more; but it was for the Claimant to provide specific evidence of value and she has not done so. I will accordingly make an award of damages in the sum of £170,000, with interest to run from 1^st September 2004.

Injunctive relief. It will be sufficiently apparent from the conclusions which I have reached above that there is plainly a continuing risk of Mrs. Amir, unless restrained by injunction, seeking to disclose the Claimant’s confidential information. Accordingly, as discussed above, I am prepared to make permanent the injunctions already given by way of interim relief. Mr. Mallin raised in closing submissions a request for an order also that Mrs. Amir deliver up the box referred to in her evidence which is said to contain the various items identified in the letter of 10^th April 2005. Mrs. Amir admits that that box was in her possession at the beginning of 2005, and it follows from my finding that Mr. Aziz does not exist that I do not accept her evidence that she returned it to him. I will hear Mr. Mallin further on the terms of the relief which he seeks in this regard.