The High Court has ordered seven letters exchanged by solicitors in a commercial dispute to be admitted as evidence and treated as open correspondence, after finding that one letter improperly linked settlement of the Irish case with Swiss criminal proceedings.
The ruling concerns an application by defendant Gerardus Henricus Michel Maria Schute, also known as Geert Schute, in proceedings brought by QPQ Limited. The letters, exchanged between October 2024 and January 2025, were marked “without prejudice save as to costs”. Mr Justice Mark Sanfey ruled on 1 September 2025 that the sequence could be admitted because the first letter crossed the line into unambiguous impropriety.
QPQ claims that Mr Schute breached a shareholders’ agreement, copied its blockchain technology known as 1DLT, and caused it substantial loss. It seeks declarations, damages and/or disgorgement of profits. Mr Schute denies investing in QPQ or entering a shareholders’ agreement in his personal capacity, and denies copying the code or soliciting QPQ employees. The pleadings are closed; discovery motions are pending. The court’s ruling addressed only the admissibility of the correspondence, not the underlying claims.
The dispute over the letters followed QPQ’s invitation to mediation, which Mr Schute rejected. In its 24 October 2024 letter, QPQ’s former solicitors referred to Swiss criminal investigations concerning other individuals, warned of potential reputational damage to Mr Schute, and urged him to engage on a proposal to “deal with the Proceedings and the Swiss criminal complaints”. QPQ said the letter invited a commercial resolution of the Irish case and did not offer to resolve the Swiss proceedings.
Mr Schute argued that the letter implied QPQ could use its influence in the Swiss investigations to pressure him into paying. The judge considered expert evidence on Swiss law stating that criminal complainants may substantially influence investigations, including their expansion or discontinuation. The court noted that Mr Schute was not a party to those proceedings.
Applying the test of unambiguous impropriety, Justice Sanfey concluded that the letter implicitly threatened to involve Mr Schute in criminal proceedings or expose him to reputational damage if he did not make a settlement proposal. He found the pressure improper and said the defendant was entitled to draw that inference from the letter. The “without prejudice save as to costs” label and the absence of a settlement offer did not, by themselves, remove the letter’s protection; it was the improper pressure that justified lifting it.
The court ordered all seven letters admitted, treating them as open correspondence because they formed a sequence. The case was listed for mention on 8 October 2025 to consider any further order, including costs. The underlying commercial claims remain unresolved in this judgment.