News

London Commercial Lawyer, Arfan Khan successfully defends a claim brought against the former director of the Bank of Ireland involving a Penthouse club in Leicester Square. The case has been reported in the FT in so far as material as follows:

“According to a court order issued by the Queen’s Bench Division on 12 September, claimants Paul Carew and Neville Mody agreed terms of settlement and apologised for making a string of claims against Irfan Qadir.

Mr Qadir, who was represented by barrister Arfan Khan, refuted the accusations relating to events that allegedly took place in 2005, when Mr Carew and Mr Mody were owners of the Penthouse club in Leicester Square.

According to the court order, Mr Mody and Mr Carew had made several claims against Mr Qadir, including an allegation that he had been associated with a criminal gang and had used 10 men with large dogs to take over the Penthouse while he was a director of the Bank of Scotland.

They also claimed that Mr Qadir – who has received the Star of Pakistan business honour for services to banking – was responsible for threats of violence and intimidation towards the claimants and their families.

In the court order, the two men agreed to withdraw all their claims against Mr Qadir, and agreed to apologise for making such allegations. They have also agreed not to repeat these or any other allegations in the claims or to commence any further proceedings…”.

In a separate article it was published by “International The News” as follows:

“In the court documents, Qadir’s barrister, vigorously denied the accusation against his client contending that they were “scandalous and the proceedings were brought maliciously in order to tarnish the good reputation” of his client.

Qadir’s barrister at the pre-trial review also submitted, “Qadir had not received a single shred of credible evidence corroborating the extraordinary allegations and assertions of fraud and forgery” and that the court must order expert reports which will prove that his client is innocent. It was only when these expert reports were received was Qadir able to disprove the claims. The handwriting experts’ opinion was that the disputed signatures on the security documentation were not forged.

Qadir then successfully sued the newspaper, who had initially defended the claims and said there was truth in the story however, a few months later the newspaper admitted that there was no truth in the allegations and paid substantial damages to Qadir — a law suit which has estimated to have cost the Mail on Sunday owners, Associated Newspapers Ltd, in excess of $1,000,000.

Qadir has been profiled in the Financial Times as a rising banking star and has won several awards. In 2011 he whistleblew to George Osborne, in relation to wrong doing at the Bank of Ireland, namely, the Bank of Ireland’s exploitation of £10 billion of deposits from more than 2 million customers of the post office.

This began a hostile dispute with his employer and several months later they both parted company, which resulted in Qadir suing his former employer for US $10,000,000. It is understood the Bank of Ireland entered into an out of court settlement with Qadir prior to the start of his case — a settlement which is rumoured to be in the millions”.