Miner ENRC, UK fraud watchdog and law firm Dechert resolve lawsuit over criminal probe

LONDON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Britain's Serious Fraud Office has settled a lawsuit brought by Kazakh mining group ENRC, which accused the agency and law firm Dechert of causing it huge losses during a high-profile criminal probe.

The settlement, announced by ENRC and Dechert on Wednesday, seemingly brings to an end a more than 10-year legal saga after the SFO began investigating alleged bribery by ENRC to secure mining contracts in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2009 and 2012, which the company denied.

London's High Court previously found the SFO would not have opened the investigation into alleged bribery had it not first induced ENRC's former lawyer from Dechert, Neil Gerrard, to act against the miner's interests.

The SFO director of legal services Matthew Wagstaff said in a statement confirming the settlement: "We are confident that the SFO's wrongdoing between 2011 and 2013 could never happen again. The SFO is a fundamentally different organisation."

The SFO dropped its ENRC investigation in 2023 with no criminal charges, saying at the time that there was "insufficient admissible evidence to prosecute".

ENRC, a former FTSE 100 company, was seeking about $76 million in "unnecessary costs" it said it had incurred during the SFO investigation and about $90 million in increased borrowing costs after the probe became public, plus interest.

The SFO and Dechert were fighting the case and a damages trial was heard earlier this year to determine how much, if anything, ENRC should receive.

But, before the High Court could deliver its ruling, ENRC and Dechert said on Wednesday that the case had been resolved between all parties, without disclosing the terms of any deal.

Gerrard's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

ENRC had separately sued the SFO, its former case controller for the ENRC probe and a former employee for allegedly leaking information to journalists. That case was settled in 2024.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin. Editing by Sarah Young, Kirsten Donovan and Mark Potter)