The firm recently won an important victory in the Second Circuit for the former Bank Mutiara, an Indonesian bank which emerged from receivership after the financial crisis. In 2013, a purported hedge fund called Weston International Capital Limited, through one of its affiliates, obtained judgments against Bank Mutiara in Mauritius, which it then sought to enforce on Bank Mutiara’s correspondent bank accounts in New York. Before Quinn Emanuel was retained, Judge Crotty of the Southern District of New York entered judgment for Weston, then vacated the judgment within three weeks of our appearing and defending Bank Mutiara. But in the meantime, Weston had obtained more than $3.6 million, which it steadfastly refused to return after the court vacated the judgments and ordered Weston to return the money.
The firm persuaded the court to hold each of the Weston entities and its principal in contempt and impose monetary fines that ultimately reached more than $400 million. But Weston still refused to comply. In response to this, Quinn Emanuel then asked the court to transfer ownership of the Weston entities to Bank Mutiara, since it was clear that Weston and its principal would never comply with the court’s orders. This was an extraordinary and apparently unprecedented order, but QE persuaded the district court to grant the motion and the Court of Appeals to affirm.
Following that order, Weston’s former management commenced an action in the Delaware Court of Chancery that was designed to oust the director that Bank Mutiara appointed to the board of one of the entities and to retake control of the entities. The firm swiftly obtained an injunction against that suit, which the Court of Appeals affirmed. The order leaves Weston’s former management with no viable means to continue to harass Bank Mutiara in federal or state courts in the United States or anywhere else, and it will bring to an end Weston’s years-long global litigation and harassment campaign against Bank Mutiara.