Swire Shipping is fighting Hong Kong tycoon Charles Brown and his Lake House family office over a container ship sale that went wrong.
But recent legal battles over the 1,304-teu Takutai Chief (ex-Lihir Chief, built 2010) are taking place in the shadows, while the parties fight over the confidentiality of documents related to the ship’s financing and purchase.
As TradeWinds reported, Swire placed the ship under the New Zealand flag last September for its Pacifica Shipping operation there.
But court papers show that Swire had had the ship on bareboat charter from Brown-controlled Inter Ocean Express until it exercised a call option and acquired the ship last August.
The sale immediately gave rise to legal disputes that have been fought out before the judges of Brisbane in Australia and Hong Kong, and arbitration panels in London.
A recent ruling in an Australian court shows that Swire, through its lawyers Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW), is now fighting Brown and co-director Torsten Hartmann over an alleged “tort of conspiracy to injure by unlawful means” through the sale.
What that tort might consist of has not been disclosed. But the dispute seems to have its roots in Brown’s entrance into the alternative finance market with a two-ship purchase in 2018.
Until then, the Takutai Chief sailed in the fleet of Marlow Navigation under the name Seajade, along with the 1,368-teu Seapearl (built 2011).
Brown’s Lake House group was involved in the purchase of the pair, in a deal that brokers then connected with Germany’s Jebsen Shipping Partners and Lubeca Marine. At the time, however, those companies told TradeWinds the actual owners were Asian interests, which have now emerged as Brown’s Lake House group.
Brown, whose full name is Charles Nicholas Alling Brown, owned the Seajade and Seapearl from 2018 until recently under the names Charlie B and Nickie B, through a Hong Kong-based company called Inter Ocean Express.
Both ships have now been disposed of, the Seajade to Swire last year and the Seapearl in January this year to active buyer Hermann Lohmann Bereederungen.
A party called Brontes Security, with links to the ships or their financing, briefly arrested the vessel at Brisbane last August immediately after the sale.
One reason the dispute does remain obscure is that Brontes Security subsequently brought a legal action in Australia to stop Swire from using certain documents in its proceeding in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region against Brown and Hartmann.
These include loan agreements and also affidavits from German shipping lawyer Henrike Koch and insolvency expert Sven Lundehn.
But in a recent ruling, Federal Court of Australia judge Steven Rares rejected the attempt by Brontes Security to stop Swire from using the documents, and ordered that Swire be released from any implicit undertaking not to do so.
Hong Kong court dockets presently contain no mention of the legal action contemplated in the Australian case.
TradeWinds has approached Koch, Lundehn and representatives of Swire and Lake House for comment.
