The nightmare that brings people to this page: a strong claim against someone who is quietly making themselves judgment-proof — the property listed, the accounts draining, the company reshuffling. The Mareva injunction exists so that winning the case still means something: assets frozen before they vanish. It is among the most powerful orders Irish courts make — and, honestly stated, among the hardest to earn.
What It Does, and What It Takes
The order restrains disposal or dissipation of assets — typically to the claim’s value — commonly with disclosure obligations in aid so the freeze can bite, and carve-outs for living expenses, legitimate business and legal costs: it restrains dissipation, not life. The proofs are deliberately demanding: a good arguable case on the underlying claim; assets within reach; and the battleground — a real risk of dissipation, shown by conduct rather than suspicion: transfers begun, sudden listings, corporate reshuffles, a history of evasion. Because these are classic ex parte applications (notice defeats the purpose), the duty of full and frank disclosure applies at full strength, and the undertaking as to damages must be meant — sized here by the damage a wrongful freeze does to a trading business. Speed is genuinely available where evidence exists: without-notice hearing, order served on respondent and banks, return date days later. The practical law: the gap between suspicion and application is where money disappears — evidence-gathering and the call belong on the same day.
Structures, Borders — and the Frozen Respondent’s Rights
Assets in other names, vehicles and jurisdictions raise the work without providing sanctuary: disclosure reaches beneficial ownership, third parties holding assets can be joined, worldwide-reach orders exist for appropriate cases (operating on the person before the court, enforced abroad on local rules), and courts have met the brother’s sudden wealth before — terrain adjoining the tracing and disclosure work of the firm’s asset-disclosure practice, and native ground for the TEP formation. And the other chair, stated with equal honesty: the frozen respondent has real rights, exercised fast — the return-date challenge, carve-outs enforced or varied, discharge for material non-disclosure at the ex parte stage, the dissipation evidence confronted with the explanation the court never heard, and fortification of the applicant’s undertaking where their covenant to pay is doubtful. The one rule in that chair: never breach the order — contempt loses everything; compliance plus aggressive challenge is the posture that wins. Both chairs are served here, and each makes the other’s advice sharper.
Assets Moving - or Assets Frozen?
Either chair, the clock is the same: evidence and advice today. Urgent calls taken, including out of hours.
Call 01 5827148