Fountain Court Chambers

Wide-ranging practice covering: general commercial litigation, judicial review, and public procurement.

Commercial work includes: fraud, conspiracy, business sales/joint ventures, restitution, freezing and search orders, minority shareholder claims. Sector experience includes life sciences, aviation, telecoms and high-tech engineering as well as numerous cases involving Russia and Russian or former Soviet Union parties.

Practises mainly in Commercial Court and Chancery Division and on appeal, also offshore including Bermuda Supreme Court and Cayman Grand Court. Public law work is based in the Administrative Court and the appellate courts and includes numerous reported cases across fields varying from regulatory challenges to human rights.

Has significant experience of constitutional, financial and vires issues for central government, regulators, local authorities, NHS entities and other agencies, and regularly advises public bodies on major procurement issues. Also carries out employment work including post-termination injunctions (springboard, restrictive covenant, confidential information etc), bonus issues and strike litigation.

Recent reported or high-profile cases include:

LCIA: (1) Nori Holding Limited (In Liquidation) (2) Centimila Services Limited (In Liquidation) (3) Coniston Management Limited v (1) PJSC Bank Otkritie Financial Corporation (2) PJSC National Bank Trust; Charles is instructed by the claimants in the arbitration, former companies in the Russian O1 Group, and second and third defendants in the related Commercial Court proceedings. The claim is for $600 million and relates to alleged commercial fraud in the Russian private banking sector. This was a 5 week trial over July and August 2020 conducted via Zoom. This is currently one of the longest disputes involving witness evidence which had been handled remotely. Charles is also dealing with the High Court proceedings which are ongoing. Palmali Shipping SA. -v- Litasco S.A.; Charles is acting for Litasco in a $2bn damages claim due for trial in 2020. Palmali claims that it entered into a 15 year exclusive contract for shipment of oil from the Volgograd refinery in the centre of Russia’s river transport system. Litasco says this agreement was never understood as binding, not least because it related to the Volga-Don shipping canal which is closed by ice for 4 months of the year. Irina Mikhailovna Vagina and Alexander Stephanovich Vagin; Charles is instructed in an international arbitration involving a multi-hundred million dollar asset tracing claim in relation to the estate of an oligarch. Charles was instructed in an arbitration in November 2019 in which he was successful. R (on the application of Jet2.com Ltd) v Civil Aviation Authority [2020] EWCA Civ 35; [2018] EWHC 3364 (Admin); [2019] EWHC 336 (Admin), seeking judicial review of decisions taken by the CAA to publicly criticise Jet2; Charles won the Court of Appeal hearing which took place in December 2019. Enka Insaat ve Sanayi A.S. -v- (1) OOO “Insurance Company “CHUBB” (2) Chubb Russia Investments Limited Chubb European Group SE (4) Chubb Limited ; Charles was instructed to attend a two day anti-suit trial in the Commercial Court, in December 2019. The case arises out of a disastrous fire at the Berezovskaya Power Plant in Russia in 2016, which caused half a billion dollars worth of damage. Wong v Grand View PTC; Charles was Instructed by interveners to represent Susan Wang, Sandy Wang, William Wong and Wilfred Wang as the Protector in major trust proceedings involving Taiwanese industrialists’ offshore trust, the wealth in which derives from the world’s largest plastics company. Charles attended a hearing in Bermuda in November 2019.

Called 1986, Lincoln’s Inn; QC 2003; Recorder 2003.

COMBAR (Chair of India Committee), ALBA, ELBA.

Magdalen College, Oxford, 1985 (1st Class Hons, Jurisprudence).