Lemos finances ‘sinkhole’ of a case after being advised of sure success

Judge says shipowner did nothing improper but bore the risk in litigation finance

Alexander Panayides, a partner at top-ranking London firm Clifford Chance, told Andonis Lemos, brother Filippos and father Nikolas that the proposal had a 90\% chance of success, according to a recent court ruling. It also could bring an immense payback.

But a company controlled by Andonis Lemos would come to spend nearly £13.8m ($22.2m) to finance an oil-industry lawsuit that turned out to be anything but a success story. Two other backers would bring the total financing to £31.8m.

Plus, a UK High Court judge has found Lemos and fellow backers BlackRobe and Platinum Partners liable for more with £4.8m in additional legal costs still unpaid.

Psari Holdings and the two New York financial firms funded US company Excalibur Ventures’ $1.6bn lawsuit against oil producer Gulf Keystone Petroleum and sister company Texas Keystone. Excalibur argued unsuccessfully that it was entitled to a stake in the outfits’ Shaikan oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Queen’s Bench Lord Justice Christopher Clarke, who rejected all claims in September 2013, has said that Excalibur’s claims were “speculative and opportunistic” and the money it sought was “grossly exaggerated”.

Clarke found the backers will have to pay additional costs calculated on the same heightened cost scale applied to Excalibur, which shelled out £17.5m, as TradeWinds’ web edition has reported. Yet the judge said Andonis Lemos committed no impropriety.

“He [Andonis Lemos] was approached by a partner, well known to his family and in a firm of top-rank solicitors, who gave him extremely confident advice which was repeated as the case progressed, despite the fissures which were developing in it,” Clarke wrote.

Rushing to back the litigation without seeking further legal advice or ever meeting Excalibur principals Eric and Rex Wempen, Adonis Lemos did not become consciously aware that the case was a legal sinkhole, the judge wrote.

Andonis Lemos, trained as a UK barrister and president of the family empire’s Enesel shipmanagement arm, set up Psari Holdings not to directly back such lawsuits but to invest in funds focused on litigation finance.

The Texas Keystone case was the first that Panayides had brought to the family, with whom he had close ties. The solicitor’s father had been chairman of one family company and his brother, George, is a Lemos group employee who first made Andonis Lemos aware of the case, according to the judgment.

Andonis Lemos could have been expected to win some £308m to £320m if the case was successful, the judge wrote.

The shipowner kept his distance from the case, as instructed by Panayides, but as it dragged on he ended up signing additional agreements to provide more funding, though doubts began to “infiltrate” his mind. Panayides allegedly provided upbeat updates on the case even during the trial.

Other high-profile law firms alsogave other backersoptimistic assessments of the prospects of the lawsuit.

A lawyer for Andonis Lemos declined to comment for this story. The judge, however, wrote that after the trial was lost, Andonis Lemos believed he was misled by the litigants he backed as much as Texas Keystone and Gulf Keystone had been.

“None of this, however, was the defendants’ doing and all of it was, in my judgement, at Mr Lemos’ risk,” Clarke wrote.