The UK intelligence community is holding its breath - and getting out the popcorn - in anticipation of what looks set to be another major email hack and leak operation that could impact several major cases including the never-ending ENRC saga.
As Intelligence Online understands from several confirmed sources, the journalist/consultant Mark Hollingsworth's email box was hacked recently. Most of London's business intelligence firms, the likes of Alaco, Diligence and K2 Intelligence, whether or not involved in the case, have already received an anonymous email announcing the forthcoming event. Those firms involved in the case are expecting the loot to come out into the open any time soon, some in eager anticipation while others with more trepidation.
In addition to his articles and books, including the much-commented Londongrad: From Russia with Cash published in 2010, Hollingsworth has made a name for himself in recent years trading in other peopleโs stolen data and being paid to place articles in national newspapers. Hollingsworth has contributed pieces to the Evening Standard, The Independent and others with information his corporate intelligence clients are eager to publish.
Yet what has London's investigators atwitter today is that as well as having worked on the fallout from the 1Malaysia Development (1MDB) scandal or on files in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Hollingsworth wrote extensively about the never-ending Eurasian Natural Resources Corp (ENRC) saga. This Kazakh mining conglomerate was an avid user of investigators and communications strategists. But who ordered the hack remains a mystery for the moment.
One lawsuit after another
In the meantime, already involved in several legal wrangles and battles for influence, ENRC, now part of Eurasian Resources Group (ERG), believes it has found the answer to its legal scrapes and troubling leaks. After first suspecting Mukhtar Ablyazov or Bulat Utemuratov to be behind the attacks on the company, the group shifted its line of sight onto the former Kazakh prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, who was paying for the hacking of the data provided to Hollingsworth. In a court case opened in London this summer, ENRC asserts that the former PM was at the origin of the lawsuits that have been badgering the Kazakh trio at the helm of the company, Alijan Ibragimov, Patokh Chodiev and Alexander Machkevitch.
According to ENRC's new lawyers at Fried Frank, Kazhegeldin is believed to have come into possession of stolen documents via a former IT consultant working for the conglomerate. The Kazakh exile is understood to have then sold and diffused the data to the British Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and other entities as early as 2012. At the time, ENRC was undergoing an independent audit into its operations that the company itself had ordered from its then lawyer Neil Gerrard, a partner at Dechert. The SFO launched its own prove into ENRC's activities in 2013 before the skirmish between two parties took a turn for the worse [IO 824]. Early this year, ENRC filed suit against the SFO, accusing the anticorruption office of conspiring with its two former Dechert lawyers to orchestrate leaks about the group.
Yet ENRC, whose chief executive Patokh Chodiev regularly sought the services of US investigations firm GlobalSource [IO, 792], is not only playing its revenge out on Kazhegeldin but also on the assorted lot of investigators and journalist-consultants in London, Brussels and Washington with whom it has worked over the years. As the website Law360 noted, on July 30 the conglomerate asked for a federal court in Maryland to subpoena South African national Phillip van Niekerk, a former journalist for the Mail & Guardian and now head of his own US based consultancy and investigation firm Calabar Consulting. The Kazakh group asserts that, despite having offered his consultancy services to ENRC in the past, Niekerk was involved in the leak of confidential internal information. ENRC also alleges that Kazhegeldin obtained confidential information from Mark Hollingsworth directly. According to ENRC's lawyers, the latter recently admitted that he collaborated with Phillip van Niekerk on this issue.
There have been repeated hack and leak operations (HALO) connected to the case. For many years, Kazhegeldin had hired the services of consultant Rinat Akhmetshin, whom in 2015 ENRC's subsidiary International Mineral Resources (IMR) accused of hacking and then leaking information about the group. Chodiev has asserted to the Colombia court handling the case that Akhmetshin had motioned a discovery on his potential role for his troubles in the matter.
In Washington, Chodiev, a shareholder of ENRC, has launched an attack on businessman Joseph Szlavik, a lobbyist for Democratic Republic of Congo state mining firm Gecamines and an acquaintance Chodiev's archenemy, Bulat Utermuratov. The oligarch alleges Szlavik maneuvered against his company, something Szlavik refutes [IO, 824]. One of the reasons behind the SFO's probe into the ENRC is its connection with businessman Dan Gertler and the award of mining contracts in the DRC.
Neil Gerrard weathers another storm
At the same time, ENRC is still in a tug-of-war in London against its former Dechert lawyer Gerrard, whom it accuses of having conspired against the company's interests. ENRC claims he disclosed information to the SFO when still employed as a lawyer for the group. Allegations Gerrard denies.
In a rare move, Gerrard fired back last week by suing the questionable corporate intelligence firm Diligence, headed by Nick Day, for ยฃ100,000 on charges of extreme harassment from by excessive surveillance before a London court.
Gerrard, a former police officer with the Metropolitan Police (MET) and a frequent user of private investigators, has been the target of several lawsuit-related leaks: for the past few years he has been defending the Ras al-Khaimah Investment Authority (Rakia) in its battle against its several former executives. A massive leak about a consultant close to the former Rakia management, Iranian American broker Farhad Azima, emerged just at the right time to serve the interests of the UAE sovereign fund. Gerrard asserted to the London court handling the case that he had been "warned" of the existing of documents pertaining to Azima on the darkweb by Stuart Page, head of Page Group (IOL 828) the Ibragimov familyโs go-to troubleshooter.
A flood of leaks
The back-to-back Kazakh London lawsuits have seen their fair share of leaks. In 2013 and 2014, hackers gained access to the inboxes of officials within the Kazakhstani ministry of justice and its consultant in France, Bernard Squarcini [IO, 730]. The leaks shed fresh light on the hunt against the fallen Kazakh minister and bank chief Mukhtar Ablyazov, still a frequent target for ENRC.
