English High Court considers tests for worldwide freezers and duty of full and frank disclosure

Описание: In Lakhany v Hasan, the English High Court* discharged a worldwide freezing order (WFO) for an applicant's failure to adequately discharge their "full and frank" disclosure duty. This case is a welcome reminder of the consequences for artificially elevating a general suspicion of dissipation to a "real risk" before the court.

The facts concerned a contractual dispute over an alleged debt of approximately GBP1 million. The remaining background is of only tangential interest: the key takeaway for litigators is how the "real risk of dissipation" was presented to the court.

Despite the respondent having relocated from the UK to Pakistan in December 2024 (and contemporaneously informing the applicant's solicitors of this), the applicant gave misleading evidence that the relocation took place months later in March 2025. The applicant invited the court to infer that the respondent had fled the UK to avoid the consequences of any adverse judgment;

In respect of a London-based property which the applicant wanted to injunct for the purposes of potential future enforcement, the applicant took four weeks to act on a property alert (being a search to protect a pending purchase) but nonetheless described the alleged risk of dissipation as "compelling". No explanation was given for the delay between the search and the filing of the injunction application (or indeed the hearing of said application, which took place a further four weeks later); and

The applicant alleged that the respondent (a) had control over the property; and (b) was seeking to "liquidate his only asset within the jurisdiction" in circumstances where a reasonable public search would have revealed this to be inaccurate: the London-based property was neither the respondent's asset, nor under his control (following the appointment of an LPA receiver on 11 August 2020).

To compound the misleading presentation of the case, the applicant's skeleton argument stated that no response to the application for injunctive relief had been received when, in fact, the application had not even been served on the respondent. The Judge hearing the application, unconvinced that the facts supported a conclusion that a risk of dissipation existed, adjourned the hearing to hear from the respondent, but the respondent – by then living abroad – only received two days' clear notice of the adjourned hearing. The hearing proceeded in his absence (despite some informal written representations being made) and the WFO was granted.

Remarkably, the applicant's procedural inadequacies persisted post-hearing: neither (a) the transcript of the freezing injunction hearing; nor (b) the subsequent judgment itself were provided to the respondent for over 18 weeks. That transcript recorded the fact that the claimant was only seeking a freezing order in respect of the London property, and not a WFO (as had been granted). When the respondent was provided with a copy of the freezing order on 2 July 2025, he was therefore unaware of the basis upon which the WFO was sought and obtained.

In these circumstances, the WFO (granted before the inconsistencies became apparent) could not survive the applicant's complete failure to provide "full and frank" disclosure. As an aside, the applicant attracted further criticism by drafting a freezing order which (a) not only failed to set a return date, but (b) also failed to provide any exception for either (i) living; or (ii) legal expenses.

Inadequate notice was given for the injunction hearing;

The applicant made misleading representations about the respondent's move to Pakistan and failed to disclose that the property in question was under LPA receivers' control since August 2020; and

There was no solid evidence establishing a risk of dissipation. In the circumstances, it's difficult to see how the court could have arrived at another conclusion.

The test, of course, for a "real risk of dissipation" is whether "unless restrained by injunction, the defendant will dissipate or dis...