NCA v Chameleon Capital Holdings: alleged fraud victim refused joinder to UWO proceedings

The Administrative Court has dismissed an application by Enspire Investments LLC to be joined as a party to proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 in National Crime Agency v Chameleon Capital Holdings Ltd and others [2026] EWHC 1745 (Admin), holding that the statutory and rule-based protections available to a person affected were sufficient. Mr Justice Fordham gave the judgement and ordered Enspire to pay costs of £36,755.77.

Swift J made an unexplained wealth order and an interim freezing order without notice on 11 November 2025, freezing £29.1m across two HSBC accounts held by Chameleon Capital Holdings and Club 365. Goose J made a property freezing order on 5 May 2026. The UWO recorded that the frozen funds originated in a transfer of €45m from Enspire's account at Emirates NBD to Pure Eco Homes on 7 November 2024, and onward to Chameleon.

Enspire's position was unusual. Schedule 3 Part 3 box 8 of the UWO required the respondents to produce a signed statement from an Enspire representative, the fifth bullet of which sought confirmation that Enspire did not consider itself the victim of fraud in relation to the transfer. By February 2026 Enspire had reported suspected fraud to the Serious Fraud Office and the NCA. It refused to sign, and says it was sent only boxes 7 and 8 by the respondents, learning of the onward transfers and the dissipation from €45m to £29.1m only later.

Fordham J rejected the NCA's submission that Part 8 applications are not "proceedings" capable of attracting CPR 19.2(2), noting that Parliament and the Practice Direction both treat them as such, and that the disapplication of CPR 5.4 by PD:CRP paragraph 9.1 only makes sense on that footing. Enspire was therefore entitled to have its application considered. It failed on the merits: no matter currently in dispute, and no connected issue, supplied the utility that CPR 19.2(2) requires.

The judgement sets out five protections available to a non-party person affected: the entitlement to apply to vary or discharge each order under the Practice Direction; the same entitlement embodied in the orders themselves; service of any other person's variation application; a statutory right to be heard before variation or discharge under sections 362K(9) and 245B(5); and, in any future Part 5 recovery proceedings, the right to seek a declaration under section 281 on meeting the substantive criteria. Parliament, the judge observed, has distinguished throughout between a person affected and a party.

Notably, the variation sought made no substantive change to either order. The only variation was Enspire's naming as a party. A court-ordered right to 14 days' notice of future applications was refused as prospective, widely framed and fraught with difficulty, cutting across any proper without notice or urgent application.

The application, Fordham J held, was really about access to court documents. He began from what he termed the investigative baseline: the court does not supervise the NCA's civil recovery investigation, which is not CPR proceedings, and challenges to investigative conduct lie in judicial review. He accepted the NCA's answers to the argument Enspire might have run in February 2026, chief among them that the UWO imposed no duty on Enspire, so contempt warning [CW2] was not engaged, and that even a clarifying variation would not have yielded the schedule 1 evidence.

CPR 5.4C did not assist. Enspire had explained why it wanted the documents, to protect its interests and assist the NCA and the court, but not how access would advance open justice, citing Moss v Upper Tribunal. Bringing the application in open court could not bootstrap a disclosure entitlement.

Counsel drew section 288A of the 2002 Act, inserted by the Crime and Policing Act 2026, to the judge's attention after circulation of the draft, agreeing it altered nothing.