It comes after a High Court
judge last week rejected all but 2 of 12 grounds of the appeal lodged by Wyatt and associates, in their bid to overturn an order to pay £1.4 million to Goldtrail’s liquidator PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
The Turkey and Greece specialist operator collapsed in summer 2010, leaving 16,000 holidaymakers stranded and a subsequent £20 million black hole in the CAA’s Air Travel Trust.
Since then PwC has been attempting to claw back some of the money on behalf of Goldtrail’s creditors, of which the CAA remains the largest.
A 2014 ruling by Justice Rose had ordered Wyatt
and associates Magnus Stephensen and Halldor Sigurdarson, along with an entity called Black Pearl Investments Ltd, to pay
£1.4 million in compensation, after they were found to have dishonestly assisted Goldtrail’s director Abdulkadir Aydin in his breach of “fiduciary duty” by misapplying the company’s money.
The defendants’ appeal against this judgment was heard at the Royal Courts of Justice last month, but Lord Justice Vos ruled last week that he would be upholding the 2014 verdict.
PwC director Ian Oakley-Smith told TTG there had been a stay of execution regarding the payment of the £1.4 million owed while the case went to appeal, but that this would now be lifted, and that PwC would be “enforcing it”.
He added that defendants would also forced to pay PwC’s court
costs and interest on the £1.4 million, which he said
was likely to total at least another £1 million.
“We always felt we had a strong case and it is pleasing that the three appeal court judges didn’t disagree with Justice Rose in the first instance,” Oakley-Smith said.
“We never seriously thought they would take a different view, but litigation is fraught with [uncertainty] and you can never be totally sure.”
The defendants have now exhausted their options – unless they choose to take their appeal to the Supreme Court, a move Wyatt revealed to TTG was being mooted by all parties.
“This option is being considered by our legal team on our behalf,” he confirmed.
The defendants would have until May 12 to formally lodge such
an appeal.
In the 20-page judgment released by Lord Justice Vos, Wyatt and others were said to have allowed Aydin to divert £1.4 million to himself via a Seychelles-based company, Morning Light Limited.
Vos added that Wyatt had wanted to make Black Pearl the holding company for a vertically integrated travel group comprising Goldtrail, seat broker Meridian (owned by his family) and Viking Airlines.
“The fact is that the appellants did assist Mr Aydin to divert Goldtrail’s money, property and opportunities,” Vos said.
“In effect, Goldtrail was paying
Mr Aydin for his shares in Goldtrail... The appellants’ eyes were open. They knew all that occurred and they assisted in it.”
Vos also made reference to Aydin, who disappeared at the time of Goldtrail’s collapse, stating that he was believed to have died.
