In re Application of RICARDO BENJAMIN SALINAS PLIEGO, & CORPORACIÓN RBS S.A. C.V., for an Order Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782 Authorizing Discovery for Use in a Foreign Proceeding
24-mc-0394 (LAK)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
April 21, 2026
LEWIS A. KAPLAN, District Judge.
USDS SDNY DOCUMENT ELECTRONICALLY FILED DOC #: DATE FILED: 4/21/2026
Appearances:
Matthew A. Toporowski
TOPOROWSKI LAW, PLLC
Attorney for Proposed Intervenor
Peter John Veysey, Jr.
Mark F. Raymond
NELSON MULLINS RILEY & SCARBOROUGH LLP
Attorneys for Applicants
Louis A. Pellegrino, III
DENTONS US LLP
Attorney for Respondents
LEWIS A. KAPLAN, District Judge.
This action commenced in 2024 upon a request pursuant to
Section 1782 Applicants sought discovery from four parties in their attempts to find the traceable proceeds of the shares that Sklarov allegedly stole and sold. This Court granted that request, and Section 1782 Applicants obtained from the subpoenaed parties – none of which was Sklarov nor controlled by him – thousands of pages of records, some of which were subject to a protective order this Court entered in the Section 1782 action. Sklarov now asserts that Section 1782 Applicants have violated that protective order. He seeks to intervene and obtain a preliminary injunction to stop Section 1782 Applicants’ allegedly unauthorized use of the records.
Facts
The Alleged Underlying Fraud
Salinas claims to be the founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, a Mexican business conglomerate of which Corporación RBS is an affiliate.1 He alleges that, in 2021, Corporación RBS and a party representing itself as an affiliate of the “Astor Group” – supposedly associated with the wealthy Astor family – entered a series of lending agreements in which Salinas agreed to transfer over 7 million shares in a publicly traded subsidiary of Grupo Salinas to a custodian to be held as collateral for a loan of over 3 billion Mexican pesos from the supposed “Astor Group” affiliate.2 In 2024, Section 1782 Applicants came to believe that the so-called “Astor Group” actually was a
The English Action
Alleging fraudulent misrepresentation and breach of contract, Section 1782 Applicants filed in the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, Commercial Court, ex parte applications to enjoin Sklarov and his associates from further liquidating the collateral shares and dissipating the related funds.4 On August 2, 2024, they obtained a worldwide freezing order against the assets of Sklarov and the other respondents in the English action, an injunction barring Sklarov and the other respondents from further dealing with the collateral shares, and a direction that they provide information about the location of the collateral shares and the proceeds of those that had been sold.5 The English court twice expanded its freezing and injunctive orders to include additional parties allegedly associated with the fraudulent scheme.6
The Section 1782 Action
Based on information Section 1782 Applicants received from one of the respondents in the English action, they believed that some of the shares and allegedly ill-gotten gains were
On October 18, 2024, JPMC responded to the subpoena served on it, producing approximately 3,000 pages of bank records relating to the Singh Parties and Sklarov.9 The JPMC material was not produced pursuant to a protective order,10 nor has a protective order in this action ever been negotiated or entered into between or among JPMC and Section 1782 Applicants.
In contrast, the Singh Parties and Section 1782 Applicants negotiated a protective order – entered by the Court on October 21, 2024 – pursuant to which the Singh Parties produced records on a rolling basis.11 That order in relevant part defined “Producing Party” to mean the Singh
The Singh Parties ultimately produced approximately 2,200 pages in response to the subpoenas and designated every document as “confidential.”16
Summary Judgment and Contempt Proceedings in the English Action
On March 5, 2025, Section 1782 Applicants moved in the English action for summary judgment against Sklarov.19 They, with the English court’s and the Singh Parties’ permission, included in that filing a copy of a report prepared by StoneTurn UK Limited.20 The StoneTurn report attempts to trace the proceeds of the shares allegedly misappropriated and sold by Sklarov and his associates.21 It contains both JPMC material and confidential discovery material from the Singh Parties from the Section 1782 action.22 Section 1782 Applicants needed and obtained permission from the English court and the Singh Parties to file the StoneTurn report because they could not otherwise have provided it to Sklarov because Sklarov had not signed the
On September 18, 2025, Section 1782 Applicants filed a contempt application against Sklarov in the English action.24 They allege that Sklarov has failed to comply with the freezing and injunctive orders entered in the English action.25 Their application relies on confidential discovery material from the Section 1782 action.26 That material currently is not part of the public record in the English court but, this Court is advised, it may become public after the hearing now scheduled for April 27, 2026.27 According to Section 1782 Applicants, a merits hearing on the contempt application realistically could not be scheduled for earlier than November 2026.28
In November 2024, after obtaining the Section 1782 discovery, Section 1782 Applicants corresponded with Discover regarding the freezing orders entered in the English action.29 They requested that Discover freeze accounts that Section 1782 Applicants, based on the Section 1782 discovery, believed to be associated with Sklarov’s alleged fraud.30 The same applicants then filed another Section 1782 action in the Northern District of Georgia seeking additional records from individuals and banks, including Discover, allegedly associated with or holding proceeds of Sklarov’s alleged fraud.31 They supported this application with excerpts from the JPMC materials obtained from the Section 1782 action in this Court.32
In December 2024, around the same time, Section 1782 Applicants filed a disclosure procedure in Monaco to obtain information and documents related to bank accounts that had been frozen in the English action.33 They further moved to intervene in proceedings in which some account holders subsequently sought to have those accounts unfrozen.34 Finally, they initiated a
In addition to the Monégasque criminal complaint, Section 1782 Applicants have initiated also a criminal complaint against Sklarov in Greece.37 They maintain that they have not used any Section 1782 material in the Greek action.38 Sklarov, however, asserts that they have used “information derived from § 1782 discovery obtained in this proceeding.”39 Finally, Sklarov contends that Section 1782 Applicants have provided portions of the StoneTurn Report or other confidential discovery material to the media, Discover, and a private corporate intelligence firm owned by former Mossad agents.40 Section 1782 Applicants deny these accusations.41
Prior Proceedings
This Court entered a temporary restraining order and an order to show cause for a preliminary injunction upon receiving Sklarov’s motion for preliminary relief. The Court temporarily restrained Section 1782 Applicants “from making any further use of, or pursuing or
Discussion
Sklarov seeks a preliminary injunction because, he alleges, Section 1782 Applicants have used and are using confidential Section 1782 material in their English contempt application, their communications with Discover, and their other legal actions around the world, all in contravention of the protective order entered by this Court. Sklarov asserts that he may face imprisonment as well as continued “vexatious and abusive litigation conduct” if the Court does not
To obtain preliminary relief, Sklarov “must establish that he is likely to succeed on the merits, that he is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, that the balance of equities tips in his favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest.”45 Although Section 1782 Applicants dispute the timeliness of Sklarov’s motion to intervene and the likelihood that he would suffer irreparable harm absent preliminary relief, their primary argument is on the merits. They assert that they never improperly used confidential discovery material in violation of the protective order and that Sklarov’s requested relief therefore is unwarranted. The Court accordingly (and despite substantial evidence to the contrary) assumes for the sake of argument that Sklarov’s motion to intervene is timely and (without deciding the point) that he could face irreparable injury at the upcoming hearing on the contempt application. The Court starts (and ultimately ends) with Sklarov’s likelihood of success on the merits. He argues that this Court’s Section 1782 order, the English Civil Procedure Rules (“CPR“), and the protective order entered in the Section 1782 action prohibit Section 1782 Applicants’ collateral use of the Section 1782 material. The Court addresses each argument in turn.
As an initial matter, the fact that Section 1782 Applicants obtained the material at issue via a Section 1782 action does not support Sklarov’s argument. The Second Circuit held as much in In re Accent Delight International Ltd.46 when it wrote, “Section 1782 does not prevent an applicant who lawfully has obtained discovery under the statute with respect to one foreign proceeding from using the discovery elsewhere unless the district court orders otherwise.”47
The question thus becomes whether this Court elsewhere restricted the use of the Section 1782 material. Sklarov argues that it did because the Section 1782 order itself states (albeit in a prefatory recital) that the desired information was “for use by the Applicants in a foreign civil proceeding in the United Kingdom.”48 This argument is wrong both as a matter of law and as a matter of common sense.
The quoted language on which Sklarov hinges this argument is part of a recital referring to the nature of Section 1782 Applicants’ motion. After all, Section 1782 authorizes “[t]he district court of the district in which a person resides or is found [to] order him to give his testimony or statement or to produce a document or other thing for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal.”49 Intended use in a foreign or international tribunal thus is a precondition of a court’s ability to grant a Section 1782 application. The language to which Sklarov points
The process by which the Section 1782 order came to include the quoted language on which Sklarov incorrectly relies bears mention too. Section 1782 Applicants filed this action and, as often occurs, sought an order under Section 1782, ex parte. They submitted a proposed form of order, thereby proposing the language of the Section 1782 order. Sklarov blinks reality by suggesting that, by including the prefatory language in the recital and in the face of the Second Circuit’s decision in Accent Delight, the 1782 Applicants intended to tie their own hands as to how they could use the Section 1782 material or, even if they had so intended, that the Court should have understood that to have been their intent. After all, likely every Section 1782 order contains substantially similar (and unremarkable) language. That language is intended to do (and indeed does) nothing more than track the statutory language of Section 1782 to reflect satisfaction of a
CPR Part 31.22(1)
Sklarov next argues that CPR Part 31.22(1) independently restricts the use of the Section 1782 material outside the English action. That Part requires that “a party to whom a document has been disclosed may use the document only for the purpose of the proceedings in which it is disclosed.”52 But that is a rule of English procedure. It does not apply here as a matter of law. And while Section 1782 Applicants and the Singh Parties have a contractual duty to follow the English rule in the English action,53 the rule imposes no use restrictions of its own force. At most it authorizes a party to seek an order from a court “restricting or prohibiting the use of a document which has been disclosed.”54 Any contention that Sklarov has that CPR Part 31.22(1) has
Protective Order
Now that it is apparent that neither the Section 1782 order nor CPR Part 31.22(1) independently limits the use of the Section 1782 material, acknowledging that the protective order means what it says reveals how utterly meritless Sklarov’s claim is. As previously described, the protective order restricts the disclosure and use of material defined as “Confidential Discovery Material.” To qualify as such, the material must have been produced by the Singh Parties and designated as “confidential.” JPMC is not a party to the protective order. It could not have designated – nor did it designate – the records it produced as “confidential” and thus subject to the terms of the protective order. Put simply, the protective order does not apply to the JPMC material.
Given that the record indicates that Section 1782 Applicants used only the JPMC material in their
the document belongs agree.”
Sklarov attempts to avoid this inevitable conclusion by suggesting that the Court must treat the JPMC material as confidential because the Singh Parties produced and designated as “confidential” copies of various records that JPMC produced without doing so. In Sklarov’s view, “[t]he confidentiality protections attach to the underlying information,” and “[a] party cannot sanitize protected information by obtaining it from a different source.”58 But Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) and precedent suggest otherwise.59 It was JPMC’s decision to produce its records without being a party to the protective order or designating those records as “confidential.” Neither the Singh Parties’ decision to do otherwise nor Sklarov’s belated attempt now (after declining to
Finally, Sklarov argues that even if the JPMC material were not subject to the protective order, Section 1782 Applicants nonetheless violated the protective order by using confidential discovery material from the Singh Parties in their English contempt application. Section 1782 Applicants maintain that such use is permitted by the protective order. Thus, this issue turns on whether the contempt proceeding rightfully is considered part of “the prosecution and defense of . . . the English Action.”60 It plainly is.
CPR Part 81, which governs committal proceedings, provides that “[a] contempt application made in existing High Court . . . proceedings is made by an application . . . in those proceedings.”61 Such an application “shall be determined by a High Court judge of the Division in which the case is proceeding.”62
The English action is an existing proceeding in the Business and Property Courts, a specialized division of the High Court. The fact that the English contempt motion is part of the
Sklarov attempts to rely on the United Kingdom Privy Council’s decision in GFN SA v. Bancredit Cayman Ltd.64 to argue that a committal application (committal for contempt being among the possible remedies) in substance is a distinct proceeding from the underlying civil action. But in that very decision, the Privy Council said the opposite, writing that “a committal application could be made by interlocutory application and the hearing of the application would normally be regarded as an interlocutory proceeding.”65 It would be tautological that an interlocutory proceeding is part of the proceeding in which it arises. And, as the United Kingdom Supreme Court has noted, treating a contempt proceeding as part of the underlying civil action, even when it means having the trial judge preside over also the contempt proceeding, makes sense. That court explained, “in the absence of special circumstances . . . . [s]uch an approach is likely to be both the most economical and the most just way to proceed.”66
U.S. law also does not help Sklarov’s case. Contempt proceedings long have been available in civil actions in this country.67 Sanctions for contempt – both civil and criminal –
In sum, the contempt proceeding falls within the prosecution of the English action. Section 1782 Applicants’ use of confidential discovery material in the contempt proceeding therefore appears to accord with the terms of the protective order.
For the foregoing reasons, Sklarov has failed to show that he is likely to succeed on the merits of his claim. His motion for a preliminary injunction (Dkt 22) is denied.
SO ORDERED.
Dated: April 18, 2026
Corrected: April 21, 2026
Lewis A. Kaplan
United States District Judge