Gohil v Gohil & Others [2025] EWHC 3646 (Fam) (Williams J) was published last week.

Last year, Morgan Sirikanda KC of QEB and Amiot Vollenweider acted for the wife at the final hearing of what is likely to be the longest-running financial remedy application in English legal history.

• The wife’s Form A application was issued almost 24 years ago, on June 6, 2002. Since then, the case has travelled from the High Court to the Supreme Court (which set aside an earlier consent order) and then back again to the High Court.
• During the proceedings, the husband was convicted of money laundering offences, and the CPS successfully froze £28 million of assets scattered around the world in the names of corporate entities. The husband contended none of the assets belonged to him, and the CPS contended that, while all the assets belonged to the husband, they were the tainted proceeds of the husband’s criminal conduct and therefore none should be allocated to the wife.
• At trial, the wife successfully established: (a) almost all the assets belonged beneficially to the husband; (b) the Family Court was not bound by the statutory assumptions contained in the Proceeds of Crime Act that the assets were tainted; and (c) the CPS had not proven on the balance of probabilities that all the assets were the proceeds of crime. Some of the assets were the untainted product of the husband’s legitimate business activity during the marriage. The wife was awarded £6.6 million, being the Court’s broad assessment of the untainted assets.

The judgment has now been published following the Court of Appeal’s refusal of both the husband’s and the Crown Prosecution Service’s applications for permission to appeal.