Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation is seeking more than $168 million in compensation from the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO), law firm Dechert, and former Dechert partner Neil Gerrard over losses it says arose from a decade-long criminal investigation that was closed in 2023, the Financial Times reported.

Nathan Pillow KC, acting for the Kazakh mining company, told a London court on Monday that ENRC was seeking “fair compensation” for losses tied to the SFO probe, including legal fees and higher borrowing costs caused by publicity surrounding the case, according to the FT. Pillow told the court the SFO case “would not have been opened” but for the defendants’ bad-faith misconduct.

The damages trial, expected to run for about five weeks, follows years of litigation over the events that led the SFO to open its formal investigation into ENRC in 2013, when the company was still a FTSE 100-listed miner before being renamed Eurasian Resources Group, the report said.

Previous trials have already found the SFO, Dechert, and Gerrard liable for wrongdoing related to the case, the FT said. In 2022, Justice David Waksman found Gerrard had been “reckless” and “negligent” in his duties to ENRC and held that the SFO had breached its duties by accepting information from Gerrard that he was not authorized by his client to provide, the newspaper reported.

The dispute stems from ENRC’s decision about 15 years ago to instruct Gerrard to investigate allegations of misconduct at one of its subsidiaries. ENRC later fired Gerrard and Dechert after press leaks and alleged Gerrard had met SFO officials without its consent. The SFO then announced a formal criminal investigation in April 2013, according to the FT.

The SFO said it strongly contested ENRC’s position and would challenge it at trial, adding that any damages must be based on proof of loss, according to the report.

Read more at the Financial Times