For anyone confronting an opposing party who has moved assets overseas, the first and often most frustrating discovery is that obtaining a judgment, whether in England or abroad, is only the beginning of the journey. The harder question is how that judgment is then actually enforced against, and in so doing, the money, the asset, or its value, extracted. The tracing, freezing, and ultimate enforcement of claims against assets which have been moved, hidden, or which simply happen to sit in a foreign jurisdiction, is an increasingly complex area for legal practitioners. Again and again, a simple query emerges. Yes, you may win – but if you do win, how do you get at it? If you are going to try, then the English legal system offers a rich toolkit for individuals in this position, and recent developments, both legislative and judicial, have significantly extended reach.
The Starting Point is Jurisdiction
Do you want to bring proceedings in England and Wales? If you do, then, can you?
The English Commercial Court has long been regarded as an attractive forum for international parties, not only due to the sophistication of its judges but, additionally, due to the breadth of the available remedies, and their support of cross-border enforcement. A claimant need not be English, the defendant need not be English, and the action need not have occurred in England for the court to accept jurisdiction, provided there is a sufficient jurisdictional gateway under Part 6 of the Civil Procedure Rules, or a contractual basis such as an exclusive English jurisdiction clause. Many international commercial contracts continue to nominate the English courts and English law, which means that English enforcement tools remain available even where the underlying dispute is geographically remote.
Once an English judgment is obtained, the enforcement landscape has historically been disjointed. The applicable regime depended on 1) where the assets sat and, 2) whether there was a treaty or statutory framework for mutual recognition with the jurisdiction in question. Brexit significantly disrupted what had been a relatively seamless system within the European Union (‘EU’). The Recast Brussels Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012, which had allowed English judgments to circulate and be enforced across EU member states with minimal red tape, ceased to apply to the United Kingdom (‘UK’) after 31 December 2020—save in respect of proceedings commenced during the transitional period. The EU’s refusal to admit the UK to the 2007 Lugano Convention left a gap which judgment creditors (‘creditors’) with assets in continental Europe found acutely painful. That gap has now been substantially narrowed.
The 2024 Hague Convention Regulations
The most significant structural development of recent years is the entry into force, on 1 July 2025, of the Hague Convention of 2 July 2019 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters. From 1 July 2025, the Convention governs the recognition and enforcement in England and Wales of judgments obtained in proceedings commenced on or after that date in any other Contracting State, and vice versa. Amendments to Part 74 of the Civil Procedure Rules gave effect to the Convention in England and Wales on the same date.
The practical significance of this cannot be overstated for practitioners advising clients with European counterparties. The Convention facilitates the straightforward reciprocal enforcement of foreign judgments between contracting states, and streamlines enforcement procedures, reducing complexity, uncertainty, and costs. It now offers UK-based individuals and entities a streamlined, treaty-based route to enforce qualifying judgments in several jurisdictions, including the EU27 (except Denmark), Ukraine, and Uruguay. From 2026, Albania, Montenegro, and Andorra have also acceded.
There are important limitations. The Convention applies only to proceedings commenced on or after 1 July 2025. It does not assist in enforcing judgments already obtained before that date. A number of significant jurisdictions, including the United States, have signed but not yet ratified the Convention, meaning no enforcement date has yet been fixed for those states. The Convention also contains a list of excluded subject matters under Article 2(1), encompassing (among others): insolvency, family law, intellectual property, and privacy matters. Practitioners must check carefully whether a given judgment falls within the Convention’s substantive scope before relying upon it.
For enforcement outside the Convention’s ambit, the pre-existing routes remain: registration under the Administration of Justice Act 1920 (for Commonwealth countries), the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933 (for a smaller set of bilateral treaty partners), and the common law action on a judgment debt, which remains available as a residual route and imposes no requirement of reciprocity. The common law route has its own conditions, requiring the foreign court to have had relevant jurisdiction, a final and conclusive judgment, and a judgment made for a definite sum.
Freezing Orders and Disclosure
Irrespective of where enforcement ultimately takes place, the preservation of assets pending judgment or pending enforcement is typically the most urgent task. An asset which cannot be found or has been dissipated is an asset which cannot be recovered. The English courts have developed a powerful range of interim remedies for this purpose.
The worldwide freezing order, granted under section 37(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, restrains a defendant from disposing of or dealing with assets wherever in the world they may be, up to the value of the claim. The requirements are well established: the claimant must demonstrate a good arguable case on the merits, the existence of assets to which the order might apply, and a real risk of dissipation. The order operates in personam against the defendant rather than in rem against specific assets, which is why its effectiveness in respect of foreign assets ultimately depends upon whether the local courts of the relevant jurisdiction will recognise and enforce it.
Alongside freezing orders (colloquially, ‘freezers’), the court routinely grants disclosure orders, requiring defendants to identify the nature, value, and location of their assets.
A Norwich Pharmacal order is a disclosure order made against a third party who is not alleged to be a wrongdoer but who has become mixed up in the wrongdoing of another. As Lord Justice Leggatt explained in the Court of Appeal in Jofa Ltd v Farah [2019] EWCA Civ 899, the principle established in Norwich Pharmacal Co v Customs and Excise Commissioners [1974] AC 133 is “that, where a wrong has been done or arguably done, a third party who has got mixed up in the wrongdoing so as to facilitate it, albeit innocently, may be ordered to provide information which is needed to enable the victim to sue the alleged wrongdoer.” The applicant must demonstrate a good arguable case of wrongdoing, that the respondent is or was mixed up in it, and that disclosure is necessary and proportionate. The order is commonly deployed against financial institutions to identify unknown fraudsters or to trace the onward movement of misappropriated funds.
A Bankers Trust order is a distinct but related remedy grounded in the equitable right to trace. As the analysis of the seminal decision in Bankers Trust Co v Shapira [1980] 1 WLR 1274 (CA) is commonly understood, it concerned a defrauded claimant’s equitable right to trace its original assets into either the proceeds of sale or new substituted assets, and held that to give effect to that right the court had jurisdiction to order a bank to disclose the state of, and documents and correspondence relating to, the account of a customer who was, on the face of it, guilty of fraud, even where the bank itself had incurred no liability. Bankers Trust orders will not be granted lightly. To obtain such an order the evidence of fraud against the bank customer must be very strong; there must be a good reason to believe that the property in question belongs to the claimant, that the claimant has been fraudulently deprived of it, and that delay might result in the dissipation of the funds before the action comes to trial. Unlike a Norwich Pharmacal order, which is directed at identifying a wrongdoer or pleading a claim, a Bankers Trust order is specifically directed at enabling a proprietary tracing claim to be pursued and is therefore of particular utility where the claimant has an arguable equitable interest in the property.
Where fraud or money laundering involves rapid movement of funds through multiple financial institutions across several jurisdictions, these disclosure tools can prove as commercially valuable as the freezers themselves.
Perhaps underused, and often underestimated by creditors (especially those unfamiliar with the English jurisdiction), is the equitable remedy of receivership by way of equitable execution. Where a judgment debtor holds an asset which is not straightforwardly amenable to the conventional methods of execution, such as third party debt orders or charging orders, the court may appoint a receiver under its equitable jurisdiction, now codified in section 37(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, to collect or manage that asset on behalf of the judgment creditor. The threshold question is whether the appointment is “just and convenient,” a deliberately broad formulation that gives the court substantial latitude to fashion a remedy suited to unusual or intractable enforcement situations.
Proceeds of Crime Act 2002
Where assets represent the proceeds of crime, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 allows for civil recovery proceedings under Part 5. These may be brought by the National Crime Agency in the High Court, without any requirement for a prior criminal conviction, against property which is, or represents, property obtained through unlawful conduct. In the financial year ending March 2024, the UK recovered £284.5 million through confiscation, forfeiture, and civil recovery orders, a 15 per cent increase on the previous year. Unexplained Wealth Orders, introduced by the Criminal Finances Act 2017, may require a respondent to explain the provenance of assets which appear disproportionate to their known income. Though their use has been more limited than originally anticipated, they remain a valuable investigative tool in cases involving politically exposed persons and suspected corruption.
The Emerging Challenge of Digital Assets
Cross-border asset recovery increasingly involves cryptocurrency and other digital assets. Their lack of location presents obvious challenges for both tracing and enforcement. The courts have demonstrated considerable willingness to adapt existing legal tools in this context. Freezing orders have been granted over identified crypto wallets, and the court has exercised the Norwich Pharmacal jurisdiction to compel exchanges to disclose the identities of account holders.
The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in 2025, has now confirmed the position in statute: a thing which is digital or electronic in nature is not prevented from being the object of personal property rights merely because it does not fall within the two traditional categories of personal property. This legislative confirmation provides a cleaner foundation for asset recovery claims involving tokens, NFTs, and other novel digital instruments, removing what had been an area of doctrinal uncertainty that occasionally created difficulties in obtaining injunctive relief.
Practical Considerations
Clients and their advisers approaching a cross-border recovery exercise should bear several practical points in mind. Speed is often decisive: assets can move quickly, and without notice applications for freezing relief should be pursued at the earliest reasonable opportunity, subject always to the duty of full and frank disclosure owed to the court on such applications. The identity and location of assets must be established as precisely as possible before enforcement steps are taken, because an order against an asset the debtor no longer holds is worthless. Where multiple jurisdictions are involved, it is usually necessary to engage local counsel at an early stage, both to advise on the enforceability of English orders and to take complementary steps under local law. Co-ordination between jurisdictions, once largely dependent on informal relations between practitioners, is increasingly supported by treaty frameworks and the growing body of international judicial cooperation mechanisms.
The entry into force of the Hague Judgments Convention has materially improved the prospects for parties who litigate before the English courts and then need to enforce in Europe. This development reinforces what practitioners in this field have long understood: that the English courts are willing to deploy the full range of their jurisdictional and equitable powers in the service of a creditor who has done the necessary work to bring a meritorious claim before them. Subject to the location of the assets and the reciprocity of their jurisdiction, an English order can be a good starting point to enforcement proceedings.
