{"id":587590,"date":"2026-07-15T21:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T21:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/587590\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T21:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T21:36:09","slug":"fintech-firm-ordered-to-disclose-the-source-of-its-funding-in-high-court-action-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/587590\/","title":{"rendered":"Fintech firm ordered to disclose the source of its funding in High Court action \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a public interest in determining if a lawsuit taken by an Irish-registered fintech firm is being unlawfully funded by a third party, a High Court<\/a> judge has held. <\/p>\n

In a judgment this week, Judge Michael Twomey ordered QPQ Ltd to make disclosures to allow the court to determine if its case against Dutch national Geert Schute was, or was not, \u201cfunded in contravention of Irish criminal law\u201d.<\/p>\n

The funding of litigation by a third party with no interest in a dispute in exchange for a share of the proceeds is known as champerty, and is illegal. <\/p>\n

QPQ Ltd, an Irish entity, brought proceedings in 2024 claiming Schute breached a shareholder agreement by copying the firm\u2019s blockchain<\/a> technology system and using it to develop a rival product. Schute denies the claims.<\/p>\n

Blockchain technology is a system in which information is channelled through a series of independent computers allowing, in one use case, for a decentralised financial system that does not require a central bank.<\/p>\n

In a pretrial application, Schute claimed QPQ Ltd\u2019s lawsuit was being funded by a third party, with the third party seeking to benefit from a share of the potential proceeds of the litigation. <\/p>\n

Schute sought an order directing QPQ Ltd to disclose its litigation funding arrangements. <\/p>\n

It is not in dispute that QPQ Ltd does not have the means to fund the litigation against Schute. <\/p>\n

However, QPQ Ltd denies the claim of champerty, asserting that the litigation is being funded by its parent company, QPQ AG. Funding by a parent company is allowed. <\/p>\n

Schute claims documents disclosed in the course of the litigation refers to QPQ Ltd\u2019s case being funded by a party other than QPQ AG, with the latter entity being used as a funnel for the third-party funding. <\/p>\n

In his judgment, Twomey said it seemed there was \u201ccogent evidence\u201d in these documents \u2013 including a thread of WhatsApp messages \u2013 to \u201csupport a claim that improper third-party litigation funding could have been provided in this case\u201d. <\/p>\n

In particular the messages indicate that a named individual who does not have a legitimate interest in the litigation could have provided funding, \u201calbeit that it could have been provided through QPQ AG\u201d, the judge noted.<\/p>\n

The judge noted that the messages indicated that there could be other third-party funders.<\/p>\n

For these reasons, there were grounds for ordering QPQ Ltd to disclose its litigation funding arrangement, the judge said. <\/p>\n

The judge said there was also a public interest in granting the order. \u201cThis is because there is clearly a public interest in documents being disclosed which may either support or disprove the fact that a criminal offence has been committed,\u201d the judge said. <\/p>\n

The judge noted that Ireland has five times more High Court judges per capita than England and Wales \u2013 but despite this, the \u201csheer volume\u201d of litigation is such that there are backlogs in dealing with said lawsuits. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn these circumstances, and in particular in light of these backlogs, it seems clear that any increase in litigation caused by unlawful third-party litigation funding is likely to increase the amount of litigation and exacerbate those backlogs,\u201d the judge said. <\/p>\n

The judge said he would make the disclosure order as sought by Geerte. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn this way the High Court will have more information in relation to a trial it is due to hear, regarding whether the underlying litigation was, or was not, funded in contravention of Irish criminal law. This is clearly in the public interest,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The case will return to court next week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a public interest in determining if a lawsuit taken by an Irish-registered fintech firm is being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[13850,79,18,10476,19,17],"class_list":["post-587590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-blockchain","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116926151843843520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}