The High Court has ordered Woori Bank to disclose two internal reports and six records of conversations with third parties after rejecting its claims of privilege over those documents in a discovery dispute with KDB Ireland Limited.
In a judgment delivered on 21 December 2005, Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan ruled on an application by KDB Ireland concerning documents found in Woori Bank’s discovery in the proceedings. The court was deciding whether the specified documents could remain withheld; it was not determining the underlying dispute about the AEL loan.
Woori Bank and Hanvit LSP Finance Limited contend that KDB Ireland arranged a loan to Japanese company AEL Corporation without required prior approval. KDB Ireland accepts there was no prior written approval, but alleges that oral approval was accepted practice and relies on other circumstances, including the plaintiffs’ alleged knowledge of the loan. Those matters remain part of the underlying proceedings and were not decided on this motion.
The judge found Woori Bank had not established that litigation was the dominant purpose for creating two redacted portions of internal reports. One was an April 2004 report following meetings with Korea’s Board of Inspection and Audit; the other was a report connected with information provided to Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service. The court concluded that each had at least an equal internal or investigative purpose. It ordered disclosure of the full reports, identified as documents 3 and 5 in the second affidavit of discovery.
The court reached a different conclusion on six documents Woori Bank had given to Korea’s Public Prosecutor’s Office. The judge found that Woori Bank sought to preserve their confidentiality and provided them to support its criminal complaint against a KDB employee and to pre-empt or defend a criminal complaint against a Woori Bank employee. The defendant had not shown that the disclosure was made to gain an advantage in the Irish proceedings. Privilege was therefore not lost on the evidence before the court.
That ruling was expressly subject to possible reconsideration if Woori Bank sought to introduce evidence of an alleged admission by the KDB employee. The judge said different considerations might arise if the disputed documents had been shown to him and Woori Bank persisted in relying on the alleged admission.
The judge also rejected privilege claims over six verbatim records of conversations between Woori Bank employees or agents and third parties. There was no evidence that the conversations were confidential. The court held that litigation purpose alone did not make records of non-confidential communications privileged. The judgment addressed disclosure and privilege only; it did not resolve liability or make findings on the loan allegations.