- Isle of Man government accused of holding back key emails by property developer.
- Advocate stated that it was ‘unbelievable’ that government emails had ‘been missed in the disclosure searches over the course of 6 years.’
- Shock accusation of ‘tampering’ with email chains before they were shown to court.
- Sondica Group Inc., have now applied to the court to order the Department of Infrastructure and the Treasury to conduct further probes of their databases.
- The government departments deny corruption, malfeasance and negligence in not awarding a building contract to the preferred bidder Sondica.
- The DoI’s consultants Lambert Smith Hampton also deny wrongdoing.
- But Manx government on the hook for huge potential claim.
- Court case started-off as a ‘run-of-the-mill’ dispute between a private company and two government departments and their professional advisors, seven years ago
The highly-controversial £90 million Lord Street court case kicked-off on the Isle of Man again today.
In the latest directions’ hearing during the eight year long dispute, court documents revealed that property developers Sondica Group Inc., accused the IoM government of leaving out documents from their disclosure after ‘serious and persistent issues’ in the legal transparency process.
The company’s advocate Victoria Unsworth also made claims of email ‘tampering.’
In a legal document, she wrote that, ‘a number of emails that have clearly been tampered with by the First and/or Second Defendants (the DoI and Treasury) as part of the overall disclosure process.’
With regard to the missing documents, Ms. Unsworth focused in on an important letter from the DoI announcing the result of the tender process.
There are ‘multiple drafts of the letter proposing the winning bid (to a different developer) in early 2017,’ she explained, which have yet to be disclosed.
Ms. Unsworth has now asked for ‘selected’ electronic versions – crucially in their original or ‘native’ format – around ‘critical dates’ which could show preparatory-style bubble ‘comments’ made by officials who were feeding into the decision to exclude Sondica.
In addition, all of the emails that went into the document’s creation have also been demanded.
Her application stated: ‘The Claimant therefore seeks that all of these relevant emails are produced in native format. These comments will be critical to establishing the facts of this case.’
Disclosure is a legal term – and a duty to the courts – which takes place in the context of disputes and litigation.
The process aims to throw-up relevant documents – those that support or undermine a case or the other side’s – which are then made available to the each party and, ultimately, the court, so that facts can be established and witnesses statements corroborated or not.
But the procedure has not been straightforward in the Lord Street case.
Just over a year ago, a fresh application was made by the claimant, ontop of a previous one five years earlier, for the government departments to hand over relevant emails to Sondica – a phase known as ‘standard disclosure’ – which was later agreed in September 2024.
However, the DoI and the Treasury failed to comply again, complaining that they could not carry out the process because it was ‘too big.’
The judge criticised the government lawyers for claiming that the reason they couldn’t deliver up the documents was that the searches would cost a staggering half-a-million pounds.
However, following a hearing earlier this year and a subsequent inspection, lawyers for Sondica claim that the DoI and the Treasury still ‘had a significant number of documents missing from their list of documents, that should have been included.’
Sondica’s lawyers had worked this out in part because the DoI’s consultants Lambert Smith Hampton had already handed over emails in which the DoI and the Treasury had been copied-in – but these had not yet been disclosed by the government lawyers.
This ‘included many emails between the Defendants that had never previously been disclosed,’ according to application document written by Sondica’s by Ms. Unsworth, of Smith Taubitz Unsworth.
The advocate added: ‘It is unbelievable that these emails are not in the possession of the First and Second Defendants (given the email recipients) and further have inadvertently been missed in the disclosure searches over the course of 6 years.’
Sondica have also specifically asked for ‘emails which have a different time stamp’ from those already disclosed, and raised concerns that documents had ‘not been accurately checked.’
With regard to suprise claims of interfering with disclosure, Ms Unsworth stated: ‘The tampering can be seen from other chains of emails where the full content of the email is within the chain.
‘It is important that this email account is produced in native format in order that it may be ascertained from the meta-data who may have tampered with the content of the emails and when, given the nature of the allegations in these Proceedings.’
The issue of disclosure has been a running sore in the case.
Deemster Corlett added that the estimate ‘defies common sense to me,’ which ‘makes a mockery of litigation,’ and that such a cost to taxpayers is ‘unacceptable’.
A scenario which the judge said ‘is not that complicated’ despite having ‘dragged on’ since 2018.
Sondica Group was initially chosen as the preferred developer for Lord Street – a controversial, long-abandoned former bus terminus often described as an ‘eyesore’ and a ‘bombsite’ – only for its ‘state of the art’ plan to be rejected the next month.
The next case management conference is in November and the judge expects a trial to be heard next year.
