1. LORD JUSTICE PILL: This is an application made by counsel appearing on behalf of the Attorney General for a civil proceedings order under section 42(1) of the Supreme Court Act 1981. That provides, as far as is material:

2. Authorisation for the proceedings was given on 3^rd November 1999 and the claim form was issued on 31^st May 2001.

3. Application was made yesterday by the defendant, Dr Nyantekyi, for an adjournment of the hearing of the application. I gave judgment upon that application, refusing the adjournment, in the course of yesterday. The application was later renewed when it emerged that the skeleton argument of counsel for the Attorney General, Mr Tolley, had unfortunately not been served upon the defendant, it having been sent to the wrong address. Having heard further argument, the court again refused the application.

4. The particulars on which the applicant relies have been set out in an affidavit and in supporting schedules and bundles of documents. Apart from setting out the legal principles by which the court should consider a section 42(1) application, the skeleton argument merely collated and analysed the points that had already been made in the other documents, including the affidavit and RL1 and RL2 supporting it. The applicant submitted that if he was going to have to conduct his defence himself then he wanted more time to do research. It was clear when he subsequently addressed the court that he had a very detailed knowledge of the allegations against him as set out in the documents to which I have referred.

5. It has become clear that he has made no application for legal aid. Moreover, we have had handed to us today a letter with today’s date from the solicitors whom the defendant is saying were prepared to represent him in these proceedings, Merriman White. I do not propose to analyse that letter in any detail. It is clear that consideration is being given to whether the firm are prepared to represent the defendant in other proceedings. As I read the letter, there is no suggestion that they would have been prepared to represent him or arrange for his representation at the hearing yesterday or today. As I have said, the court refused the renewed application for an adjournment and went on to hear the submissions of Mr Tolley and of the defendant.

6. I do find it most surprising, given the defendant’s obvious detailed knowledge of events, that he had not set matters down in writing before yesterday’s hearing. As a result, he has addressed the court orally. He did so for approaching two hours yesterday and approaching two hours again this afternoon. The case was adjourned overnight when it was clear he would not complete his submissions yesterday. We agreed that his case would not be listed before 11 am due to his needing to consult documents which are in the Merriman White offices. A message was received that he had high blood pressure today and was seeking medical advice. The court was prepared to hear the matter this morning. In the event, the defendant was not present until after 2 pm. That is why the hearing has been conducted in the course of the afternoon.

7. I have referred to the fact that there was no medical evidence to support the suggestion that the defendant’s health was not good. He has addressed the court in a vigorous manner, obviously, as I said, with a considerable knowledge of the issues involved, and also in an eloquent manner.

8. The facts upon which the Attorney General relies are set out in the affidavit of Mr R I Lutterodt, as well as in the source documents in two exhibits to his affidavit, RL1, which is headed “Entities used by Nyantekyi”, and RL2, which is a schedule of litigation involving the defendant. Both documents have been explored in detail in the course of the proceedings.

9. Reference has been made to the decision of Lord Parker, Chief Justice, in In Re Vernazza [1959] 1 WLR 622, and to statements of principle arising out of the decisions in Attorney General v Jones [1990] 1 WLR 859 and Attorney General v Barker [2000] 1 FLR 759.

10. The court should consider the whole history of the matter. The exercise of the court’s discretion will depend on its assessment of where the balance of justice lies, taking account, on the one hand, of the citizen’s prima facie right to invoke the jurisdiction of the civil courts, and, on the other, the need to provide members of the public with a measure of protection against abuses and ill-founded claims.

11. The essential vice of habitual and persistent litigation, stated Lord Bingham, Chief Justice, in Barker is keeping on litigating when earlier litigation has been unsuccessful, and when, on any rational and objective assessment, the time has come to stop.

12. It emerges from Jones that the court considering the issue of a civil proceedings order is entitled to rely on the conclusions of judges in the underlying proceedings that the litigant’s conduct in those particular proceedings had been vexatious or had involved an abuse of the process of the court.

13. The court is entitled to have regard to the resources of the judicial system, which are barely sufficient to afford justice without unreasonable delay to those who do have genuine grievances and should not be squandered on those who do not.

14. Reference can readily be made to exhibit RL2, which runs to 32 pages, where the 14 actions upon which the Attorney General relies are described. They have occurred over a period of nine years from 1991 until 2000.

15. The general submission made on behalf of the Attorney General is that numerous attempts have been made to bring claims or applications against companies on the same or similar basis, notwithstanding earlier rejections by the court. Reliance is placed upon what Mr Tolley submits is the extraordinary history of proceedings in relation to 34 Ovington Square and 6/7 Prince Albert Road.

16. Orders of the court have been ignored or flouted and orders for costs made in the cases have been ignored. Almost all the claims have been determined against the defendant, either having been struck out on the merits or for breach of orders of the court, or withdrawn or effectively determined by the dismissal of an application by the defendant.

17. It is submitted that the conduct of the litigation has itself often been vexatious, in particular by way, it is submitted, of a deliberate failure to make full and frank disclosure to the court. Three judges have on separate occasions expressed their view that the defendant is a vexatious litigant and Grepe v Loam orders have been made against him on several occasions. There are a number of references to the defendant’s conduct as being an abuse of the process of the court.

18. It is submitted on behalf of the Attorney that an order can be made even though most of the litigation has not been conducted in the name of the defendant personally, but by companies. The Attorney’s submission (set out by reference to RL1) is that it is plain that the defendant has been the controlling and directing influence in the litigation involving the companies. It is submitted that it emerges from the documents that he has been responsible for the institution of proceedings by the companies and the making of applications.

19. The defendant submits that the companies are separate entities and that the fact that he has set them up does not mean that his conduct in relation to the litigation should be questioned. Mr Tolley accepts that it would not be sufficient to establish that the defendant has set the companies up. It must be established that effectively it is he who has been instituting the proceedings and making the applications within the meaning of those terms in section 42(1).

20. The defendant submits that the corporate entities should have been joined in the proceedings, that he has not been a party to many of them, and he has not been sufficiently involved in the actions to justify an order against him.

21. The defendant makes the general point that upon the material before the court, the evidence is insufficiently compelling to justify an order against him, and that it does not sustain a case that he personally has conducted civil litigation abusively or vexatiously.

22. The defendant makes the further general point that litigation where he has given instructions has been mishandled by solicitors, against whom he proposes to make a massive claim. He says that the solicitors have been negligent and untruthful and that they have been deeply involved in fraud and the forgery of documents. Information has recently come to his and his solicitors’ attention, and a great bulk of the information is now available on those subjects.

23. In particular, there has been fraud affecting the property at 34 Ovington Square (which I will refer to as “number 34”). The defendant believes that he has wrongfully served a prison sentence by reason of the fraud of others affecting that property. Independent forensic examinations have been commissioned to consider whether conveyances involving the property are false and have been forged. He states that judges have been grossly misled by other parties in relation to number 34 and that the fraud has been sufficient to deceive nine or ten High Court judges.

24. I propose briefly to refer the contents of RL2 as to which the defendant has made submissions. I will not identify the title of the action in each case, that is readily ascertainable from the schedule.

25. Reliance is placed in relation to action 1 to what the judge hearing the case referred to as “a very strange business” when a representative of the defendant had produced a letter directly to counsel. The judge plainly took the view that the letter was not a genuine one. The defendant accepts that he did not appeal against the judge’s order against the claim brought by a company with which the defendant was involved, with indemnity costs. He submits that material is now available to explain the contents of the letter which constituted the “very strange business”.

26. Actions 3, 4 and 12 were brought by companies against the People’s Republic of Angola or institutions in that state. On 9th April 1997 Master Murray made an order dismissing a summons the defendant had brought, ordering him to pay costs on an indemnity basis, and ordering that the orders he had made should be served on the Attorney General on the footing that he considered the defendant to be a vexatious litigant. On 1^st September 1997 a company with which the defendant was involved applied to Keene J seeking leave to enter judgment, and leave was granted. Master Murray made orders against the defendant on 6^th November 1997, and when Holland J dismissed an appeal against Master Murray’s orders on 15^th January 1998, he stated that “... it is manifest that Keene J was subject to one misrepresentation after another.” The judge held that the action be struck out against the state of Angola and that judgment be entered in favour of the other defendants.

27. On 12^th March 1998 Tuckey J, in relation to an action by Crescent Oil & Shipping Services Ltd, commented at page 13:

28. In action number 6 Ognall J rejected explanations which the defendant had given for matters raised before the court and expressed the view that the defendant had “wilfully deceived the court”, and also suggested that solicitors instructed by him had been misled.

29. Miss Dohmann QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, on 30^th July 1996 gave a judgment against the defendant in relation to a promisory note and stated that some of the explanations put forward on affidavit were such as to “beggar belief”. Referring to a submission that her earlier judgment had been against the weight of evidence on 2^nd May 1997, Miss Dohmann said of the evidence filed by the defendant “... if I describe it as unsatisfactory, that is a very serious understatement.”

30. Actions 7, 8, 9 and 10 refer to number 34. Judges in that case have expressed the view that the court has been misled. Judgments were made in favour of the defendant or companies with which he was said to have been involved, and later judges have expressed the view that they have been wrongfully obtained. On 23^rd December 1996 Jacob J considered a “squatters” order which had been obtained in action number 9. Jacob J took the view on 23^rd December that the defendant had obtained that order by giving false instructions to his solicitor and had obtained possession of the premises by a trick. On 5^th July 2000 Rimer J held that an application made by Cranbrook Finance to Master Bowman on 20^th April 1999 had been a “quite disgraceful one”. I repeat that one of the points made by the defendant as to many of these actions and comments is that he personally was not involved such as to make the conduct appropriate to found a section 42 order. Rimer J gave summary judgment for a company known as Abelene Ltd and for a Mr and Mrs Wallitt on their claim against six defendants, which included the defendant.

31. Notwithstanding the order of Jacob J on 23^rd December 1996, in action 10 there were applications over Christmas involving the defendant. On 26^th December the defendant made an ex parte application over the telephone to Maurice Kay J (as vacation judge) in relation to number 34, including an application that Abelene Ltd should be restrained from entering that property. On the basis of the information provided by the defendant, the learned judge made an appropriate order. Abelene’s solicitors made an application over the telephone on the following day, 27^th December, and Maurice Kay J varied his order, granting Mr and Mrs Wallitt liberty to remain on the premises pending the hearing of a summons on 3^rd January 1997. On that date Butterfield J dismissed the defendant’s application for a continuation of the injunction he had obtained, set aside the order of Maurice Kay J, and ordered the defendant to pay costs on an indemnity basis. Butterfield J described the defendant’s conduct as “a lamentable and disgraceful attempt by the plaintiff [in that action] improperly to manipulate the court processes” and “an abuse of the process of the courts in the clearest possible way”.

32. Action 11 involves Sonangol Ltd, against whom the defendant brought a petition to wind up based upon a large alleged debt. In the course of the proceedings Lightman J, on 7^th July 1997, dismissed a discovery application by the defendant, ordered him to pay costs on an indemnity basis, and declined to restore the petition to wind up. Lightman J directed that the papers be sent to the Attorney General for consideration of a section 42 order.

33. In relation to action 12, on 28^th May Cresswell J set aside an earlier order of Moses J in favour of the company with which the defendant was involved and expressed the view that “in this litigation and other litigation involving Mr Nyantekyi there has been repeated abuse of the process of this Court and of the courts of other jurisdictions”. The judge directed that a copy of the judgment be sent to the Attorney General. In 1999 Cresswell J also set aside service of the writ and all further proceedings in several actions.

34. Actions 13 and 14 relate to 6/7 Prince Albert Road. Following court orders in December 1999 the defendant and his family reoccupied the property. On 12^th January 2000 Lloyd J found that the defendant was in contempt of the order to vacate the property and should be committed to prison forthwith for seven days. It was not necessary to give effect to that order. Action 14 has not been determined; it also relates to number 6/7.

35. I have referred to the defendant’s submission that he is not involved, or not sufficiently involved, in the litigation to justify a finding that he has instituted proceedings or that he has made applications. In relation to the commercial actions, he submits that they involved serious litigation by the companies with which he was involved; one case, for example, has been reported at [1997] 3 All ER page 428. The findings and comments of Cresswell J were not, it is submitted, justified. They led to criminal proceedings against the defendant which failed, an indictment against him being quashed in October 2000 and further investigations in relation to perjury and perverting the court of justice not being pursued. Cresswell J’s comments and findings, he submits, should, in those circumstances, be ignored. Moreover, in November 2000 a summons was issued to have the orders of Cresswell J set aside. That has not, as yet, been proceeded with. Similarly, the comments of Lightman J should be ignored because no proceedings were instituted as a result of them.

36. The defendant states that compelling evidence is now available of impropriety by solicitors then acting in relation to the proceedings which were considered by Cresswell J and that proceedings had been based on fraud and irrelevant documentation. It is proposed to bring proceedings against the solicitors acting for the companies with which the defendant is involved and also to reopen proceedings against other parties.

37. The defendant throughout stresses that he is at a distance, in any event, from the companies concerned, stating that he wants to put water between himself and those companies.

38. The sentence of imprisonment which the defendant has served was based upon alleged conduct in relation to number 34. He is seeking to appeal against that conviction. Leave to appeal has been refused by the single judge but is being renewed before the full court. He states that his conduct in relation to number 34 was not criminal and that he has been the victim of fraud in relation to that property. He maintains that the issue as to the title to that property must be resolved in his favour. If issues as to title are resolved in that way, if what he submits is fraud is established, then the whole basis for the findings against him in those actions disappears.

39. He submits in relation to the comments of judges in relation to the litigation about number 34 that there were separate actions and he did not think it necessary to tell the judge in one action what was happening in the other because it was irrelevant. Moreover, if the underlying issue as to title is in his favour, then he was justified in taking the actions he did, which I have briefly summarised.

40. He states that there was no legal basis for the orders against him in relation to number 34. Family trustees owned the property lawfully and he and his family were unlawfully dispossessed. The defendant has shown to the court deeds which he submits are void and fraudulent deeds, and which he proposes, in actions which he instructs Merriman White, to demonstrate are such.

41. On the commercial actions, the defendant has addressed the court in detail, stating that different causes of actions are involved and submitting that there is no substance in the suggestion that the actions are not brought in good faith, and also disputing that he has instituted them within the meaning of the section. On behalf of the Attorney, reliance is placed upon the contents of RL1 in that respect. The defendant himself has referred to Amertex Resources UK Ltd as one of “my three major UK companies”.

42. Reliance is placed by the Attorney on Holland J’s statement that it seemed that the defendant was the “controlling mind” in the companies involved in the litigation identified in the schedule, and Sir Peter Pain’s statement on 8^th October 1992 that the defendant was “the moving spirit” behind one of those companies.

43. Reliance is placed on the fact that the defendant’s affidavit in 1992/365 described himself as the “authorised representative by power of attorney”, and that in an affidavit of 16^th July 1998 he was “active in the business of one of the companies” between 1985 and 1997. In the affidavit of 13^th March 1992 he referred to “Starlen Services Inc and a number of other companies controlled by me”.

44. Given the purpose of the section, I accept the submission of Mr Tolley that the defendant has instituted proceedings and made applications within the meaning of section 42 even where, as in many of the cases, the defendant is not himself a party to the proceedings. I have had regard to the submissions of the defendant, which I have summarised.

45. I have come to the conclusion that the Attorney General is entitled to a civil proceedings order under section 42. The mischiefs against which such an order is directed have been established in this case and, in my judgment, it is appropriate that an order be made. The conduct of the defendant in relation to the litigation involving number 34, as described by the judges involved in that litigation, alone goes far to justify such an order, against the background of the facts as a whole.

46. While it is not necessary for me so to find, it appears to me, on a consideration of the evidence, that the comments of the judges, once they were told of the true position, were comments they were entitled to make. I cannot accept that the defendant’s belief in the underlying justice of his case in relation to number 34, because he believes the conveyances to be fraudulent, justify the conduct which is described in RL2. Moreover, the defendant’s persistence, even now, in justifying those actions, which have been the subject of scrutiny in the courts and trials, reinforces the view that an order against him is required in the circumstances.

47. I bear in mind that some of the commercial actions have had a legitimate basis, but the defendant’s conduct in relation to them as a whole, considering the whole history of the matter, is such that the order should, in my judgment, appropriately be made.

48. The defendant has attempted to draw attention to the disadvantages under which he labours. Of course, he appears in person. He has had an opportunity to be heard and has been heard. He has not set out in writing, as he could well have done, the material on which he relies. It would have been sensible to do that if the court was to have the best opportunity to consider his case. He did not do that. However, he has addressed the court orally at length and the court has followed the submissions which he has made yesterday and today and had regard to them.

49. For the reasons I have given, I would accede to the application of the Attorney General and make a civil proceedings order under section 42(1) of the 1981 Act. Schedules RL1 and RL2 should be attached to the judgment for the purposes of identification.

50. MR JUSTICE POOLE: I agree.

51. The catalogue of deception, non-disclosure and misrepresentation involved in the story of the defendant’s litigation is extensive. He is not only a vexatious litigant, but, in my judgment, an unusually dangerous one. I should hesitate to place his false and fraudulent manoeuvres in any ranking order, but not the least abusive of his tendencies has been by non-disclosure and misrepresentation to mislead judges where they are perhaps at their most vulnerable, namely in ex parte applications for relief, such as that before Saville J, as he then was, on 5^th April 1993 and that before Maurice Kay J on 26^th December 1996.

52. I go to those two applications for their short details. After two earlier attempts to gain a Mareva injunction in 1991 and 1992, Crescent Oil & Shipping (Liberia) obtained an ex parte Mareva injunction against Sonangol UEE from Saville J on 5^th April 1993. Thereafter, however, on 30^th April 1993, following an inter partes hearing, Hobhouse J, as he then was, in a detailed judgment, set that injunction aside, expressing the view, amongst other things, that the application had been presented to Saville J on a basis which had now been shown to be substantially false, including, as he described it, “significant misrepresentations”. He added that there were significant material matters which should have been disclosed to Saville J and which had not been, that the application was misconceived, in fact and in law, and that it included innuendo that was unsubstantiated, inaccurate and misleading. All of that was over eight years ago. There was much more to come.

53. In the application to Maurice Kay J on 26^th December 1996, what happened was that the application was made over the telephone to Maurice Kay J, as vacation judge, for orders joining, amongst others, Abelene Ltd into the action in question and restraining it from entering or remaining at 34 Ovington Square. The judge granted that order on the basis of what he was then told, amongst other things, restraining Abelene from entering or remaining at the premises until 3^rd January 1997 upon Dr Nyantekyi’s undertaking to issue a summons returnable on that date. Only three days before that Boxing Day there had been an order of Master Winegarten setting aside an order for summary possession of 34 Ovington Square, and an order from Jacob J ordering Dr Nyantekyi to vacate the premises at once. The following day there had been an order of the Court of Appeal refusing Dr Nyantekyi leave to appeal against that order of Jacob J. None of those orders were disclosed to Maurice Kay J by Dr Nyantekyi. In the course of argument I asked Dr Nyantekyi if he wished to comment upon any of this. His rejoinder was that if he did not disclose those earlier orders of 23^rd December and 24^th December to Maurice Kay J it was because he had not considered them to be relevant.

54. The history of Re Sonangol Ltd, 02697 of 1997, is perhaps worth summarising as it is not untypical of Dr Nyantekyi’s style of litigation. I go very briefly to the particulars of that action. What happened was that in 1997 Dr Nyantekyi issued a petition to wind up Sonangol Ltd, based upon what was said to be a debt for US$365,000 plus interest. This claim arose from two consultancy agreements. On 5^th June 1997 Evans-Lombe J granted an ex parte injunction temporarily restraining Dr Nyantekyi from proceeding with that petition. On 18^th June Dr Nyantekyi issued an application seeking an order requiring Sonangol to produce a volume of documents purportedly referred to in the affidavit evidence filed on behalf of Sonangol in support of the injunction, but on 23^rd June 1997 Neuberger J granted a final injunction restraining Dr Nyantekyi from proceeding with the petition and struck the petition out on the ground that it was an abuse of the process. Dr Nyantekyi was ordered to pay the costs of the petition on the indemnity basis. On 7^th July of that year Lightman J dismissed Dr Nyantekyi’s discovery application, together with an application by Dr Nyantekyi to restore his petition, ordering him again to pay costs on an indemnity basis. Lightman J described the application to restore as “completely hopeless” and directed that the papers be sent to the Attorney General to consider whether an application should be made under the Supreme Court Act 1981 section 42.