On 24 November 2025, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Lord Hodge, Lord Briggs, Lord Leggatt, Lord Richards and Lady Simler) handed down judgment in the case of Credit Suisse Life (Bermuda) Ltd v Bidzina Ivanishvili & Ors [2025] UKPC 53 (see also here).
The decision arose out of a long-running fraud carried out by Patrice Lescaudron, a Credit Suisse employee based in Switzerland, against the Respondents, who include Mr Ivanishvili, the former Prime Minister of Georgia, on substantial sums invested by Mr Ivanishvili with Credit Suisse. Those sums were paid as premiums under life insurance policies with CS Life, held in a segregated account of CS Life, and invested according to the policyholder’s mandate.
The Respondents brought claims for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraudulent misrepresentation on account of CS Life’s mismanagement of Mr Ivanishvili’s assets and implied representations made to the effect that the policy assets would not be managed fraudulently. The proceedings were defended by CS Life on the basis, among others, that the contractual documents imposed limited obligations on CS Life which were inconsistent with the contractual claims, the fraudulent misrepresentation claim failed in law on account of the requirement that the claimant was aware of the representation or understood it to have been made, or was time-barred, and that a lower award of damages was appropriate.
At trial before Chief Justice Hargun, the Respondents succeeded in their claims for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraudulent misrepresentation and obtained judgment for US$607 million. The Court of Appeal of Bermuda upheld the breach of contract and fiduciary duty claims, and the US$607 judgment quantum, but allowed the appeal in respect of the misrepresentation claim.
The judgment of the Privy Council, delivered by Lord Leggatt, dismissed all but one of CS Life’s grounds of appeal, upholding the Chief Justice’s US$607 million award subject to a re-assessment of damages from a later start date, claimed by CS Life to reduce the damages by some US$58 million ([80] and [84], which figure was not agreed and will be subject to a quantification exercise). The Judgment also dismissed a cross-appeal in respect of the misrepresentation claim.
The Privy Council found that:
- The Chief Justice and the Court of Appeal correctly construed the policy documents as imposing on CS Life an obligation to invest the policy assets in accordance with the chosen mandate ([41]), which was breached in that decisions were made by Mr Lescaudron acting dishonestly and without authority from CS Life ([58]).
- The Court of Appeal had been correct to refuse to allow CS Life to advance a new argument for the first time on appeal on the basis that it was “comprehensively abusive”, and indeed that CS Life’s appeal renewal of the argument before the Privy Council was itself a “further abuse” ([62] and [68]).
- The fraudulent misrepresentation claims would have succeeded, if not for the time-bar issue, because under the law of England and Wales and Bermuda it is not a legal requirement of a claim for deceit that the claimant was aware of the representation or understood it to have been made ([179]).
In making the third finding, the Privy Council rejected the theory that contemporaneous awareness and understanding of the representation is in law an essential element of a deceit claim first articulated by Christopher Clarke J (as he then was) in Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG v Royal Bank of Scotland plc [2010] EWHC 1392 (Comm); [2011] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 123 and applied by Cockerill J (as she then was) in Leeds City Council v Barclays Bank plc [2021] EWHC 363 (Comm); [2021] QB 1027. The Privy Council opined (at [161]) that: “It is an everyday feature of human experience that people form and act on beliefs without any conscious awareness or thought. If someone takes advantage of such unconscious mental processes to deceive another person and cause her to act to her detriment, there is no reason why a claim for damages should not lie. The mischief is no less than in a case involving conscious awareness.”
The Privy Council judgment therefore stands as the leading case on the issue of the contemporaneous awareness and understanding requirement in the tort of deceit under English and Bermudian law.
A copy of the judgment is available here.
Louise Hutton KC, Felix Wardle and Akash Sonecha acted for the Respondents, with Richard Morgan KC of Maitland Chambers, instructed by Sarah Rees, Conor Daly and Alex Lepretre of Blake Morgan LLP.
Joe Smouha KC (along with Louise Hutton KC and Felix Wardle) represented the Claimants at first instance.
