IAHP Group Holdings - Case Update

The High Court has granted a worldwide freezing order against the husband and wife former directors and shareholders of a holding company now in liquidation who are accused of misusing company funds for their personal benefit, doctoring filings and statements, and refusing to comply with the liquidators.

IAHP Group Holdings was the parent of the RDCP Group, a group of companies founded in 2015 by Sameer Rizvi and Iryna Dubylovska, who met in 2014 while working as Investment Banking Analysts at RBS in London. ​According to its website, RDCP currently owns nine companies that collectively employ over 2,000 people and has a combined enterprise value of $700 million, generating annual revenues of £315 million and EBITDA of £34 million.

In March 2024, IAHP Group Holdings was wound up following a petition in February by Theodore Management Limited. On the petition date, Mr Rizvi and Ms Dubylovska made retroactive filings purporting to resign as directors and to appoint their children’s nanny as director.

The liquidators, Sean Bucknall and Andrew Hosking of Quantuma, brought a claim under section 212 of the Insolvency Act 1986 alleging that Mr Rizvi and Ms Dubylovska misused the company’s assets for personal benefit (e.g., luxury vehicles, private jets, and villa rentals), disguising the misuse through directors’ loan accounts. The company is estimated to have a deficiency of £11 million, with £4.1 million alleged to have been misappropriated by Mr Rizvi and Ms Dubylovska. They then sought a worldwide freezing order and provisions for disclosure.

The Court held that there was a real risk of dissipation based on Mr Rizvi and Ms Dubylovska’s pattern of evasive conduct, including the retroactive resignations and asset movements, the misuse of company funds for personal benefit, the presentation of doctored documents, including a bank statement allegedly showing a fake £77 million balance, and their ongoing failure to cooperate with the liquidators. The Court also rejected Mr Rizvi and Ms Dubylovska’s claims that the payments were offset against roughly £3.9 million in shareholder loans injected into the company, finding their explanations to be convoluted, unsupported by contemporaneous evidence, and likely to be after-the-event reconstructions. In particular, the “money-go-round” explanations involving Indian partnerships and surplus funds from acquisitions were found to be unconvincing.

As a result, the Court granted the worldwide freezing order. A propriety injunction was also granted preventing disposal of assets traceable to company funds, as well as a disclosure order requiring the identification of assets over £5,000.

Read the decision HERE.

Professionals involved: Stephen Davies KC and Dale Timson of Enterprise Chambers (instructed by Horwich Farelly) for the liquidators, Sean Bucknall and Andrew Hosking of Quantuma