Mr. Toby Brown and Mr. Jeremy Yau, instructed by C. P. Lin & Co, represented Toyota Boshoku Europe NV (“Toyota”) in a large scale fraud case, in which proprietary together with “top up” Mareva injunction orders were obtained against 48 Defendants.
On 6 May 2022, Toyota successfully opposed an application brought by the 48th Defendant to discharge the injunction order.
In the judgment, Madam Justice Queeny Au-Yeung set out the relevant legal principles and provided helpful guidance on the Court’s approach to assessing the Defendant’s evidence adduced for establishing a bona fide purchaser defence, building on Pacific Rainbow International Inc v Shenzhen Wolverine Tech Ltd & Ors unrep., HCA3023/2016, 2 May 2017.
The Court approached the Defendant’s evidence from 3 perspectives:
- Whether the evidence establishes that the Defendant was operating a legitimate business;
- Whether the evidence establishes that the Defendant has legitimate business in the alleged line of business (in this case, electronic parts); and
- Whether the evidence establishes that the particular transaction in which the Defendant received the proprietary funds (in this case, from another “upper layer” defendant) was legitimate.
Upon examination of the evidence adduced by the 48th Defendant (with the Court’s observations and concerns on the evidence helpfully set out in detail in the judgment), the Court formed the view that there were aspects in its evidence which gave rise to doubts on each of the questions above, which can only be resolved at trial. In the premises, the discharge application was dismissed.
The judgment can be found here.