A forged agreement underpinned the overseas debt claim now blocked from being pursued
The Supreme Court of New Zealand reinstated orders barring a New Zealand company from enforcing a Kentucky judgment obtained by fraud.
In Kea Investments Limited v Wikeley [2026] NZSC 97, the court allowed an appeal by Kea Investments Limited (Kea), a British Virgin Islands company, and restored High Court injunctions that the Court of Appeal had discharged.
The court said that the dispute arose from what it described as "an elaborate worldwide fraud" perpetrated against Kea. At its centre was a forged "Coal Agreement," purportedly signed in 2012, under which Kea was said to owe funding for coal-mining investments in the United States.
Wikeley Family Trustee Limited (WFTL), a New Zealand company then controlled by the first respondent, used the forged agreement to obtain a default judgment against Kea for US$123.75 million, plus interest and costs, in the Fayette Circuit Court of Kentucky in 2022. The court found that the judgment was itself the product of fraud.
Because WFTL was New Zealand-incorporated and remained subject to local jurisdiction, the High Court granted permanent anti-suit and anti-enforcement injunctions – orders restraining a party from pursuing or enforcing foreign proceedings. It also placed WFTL in interim liquidation.
The Court of Appeal upheld the findings of fraud but discharged the injunctions. It held that international comity, being the respect courts owe to the legitimate exercise of jurisdiction by foreign courts, required a New Zealand court to await the outcome of Kea's pending Kentucky appeal.
The Supreme Court disagreed. It held that fraud reframed ordinary comity considerations. The court said that fraud was "a paradigm, indeed extreme, example of vexatious and oppressive conduct" on which anti-enforcement relief could readily be granted where the issuing court had the fraudster within its jurisdiction.
The court also held that Kea was not required to exhaust its appeal rights in Kentucky first. It said that the engagement of the Kentucky courts was itself "a core, operative element of the fraudulent enterprise," and that waiting to see whether those courts reached the correct result would be "the reverse of comity."
The court noted that WFTL's interim liquidation further reframed comity. The fraudulent judgment creditor was now controlled by independent liquidators who were officers of the court and who had supported Kea's appeal so that they could seek discharge of the default judgment.
The court ordered the first, second, fourth and fifth respondents to pay Kea costs of $250,000 plus disbursements and ordered the first respondent to pay the liquidators $30,000. It dismissed the first respondent's application for a stay of enforcement.
