Dishonest Assistance – Understanding The Risks: Guidance Note

This Guidance Note is about dishonest assistance and will explore the legal position of those in the Island's professional trust and fiduciary services businesses who have carried out client instructions without first considering or investigating the legitimacy of their client's activities. It will use practical examples to illustrate what can go wrong, particularly centering on the recent decision of Jersey's Royal Court in Nolan v Minerva Trust & Others, and will suggest how businesses should act to avoid the risk of being held to have dishonestly assisted a client in a breach of trust or fiduciary duty.

Dishonest assistance is a category of secondary liability that can attach to a person who assists in a breach of trust or a breach of fiduciary duty. The breach of trust itself (the primary liability) need not be dishonest, although it often will be. Rather it is the assistance in that breach of trust by a third party, such as a service provider, which has to be