Written by Paul Millinder has been portrayed by the courts as a vexatious litigant. His case narrative asks a harder public-interest question: whether procedural restraint can become a shield against examining allegations of fraud, set-off error and institutional misconduct.
Publication snapshot
- The article examines Millinder’s challenge to the official narrative that he is simply a vexatious litigant.
- It focuses on alleged PDF-access failures, civil restraint orders, contempt proceedings and the disputed insolvency set-off issue.
- It treats allegations of judicial misconduct, corruption, evidence suppression and institutional collusion as Millinder’s contested case narrative.
- It asks whether the legal system has properly distinguished abusive litigation from persistent attempts to expose alleged wrongdoing.
The official narrative
For years, businessman Paul Millinder has been portrayed by the courts as a vexatious litigant: a persistent claimant who repeatedly pursued hopeless proceedings and refused to accept judicial rulings. He was ultimately restricted from bringing legal proceedings in England and Wales without court permission and later sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court.
Millinder and his supporters say that narrative is profoundly misleading. They argue that he is not a legal troublemaker, but a Litigant in Person who exposed serious misconduct and was then procedurally contained by the system he was trying to challenge.
The public-interest issue is not whether courts should have tools to manage abusive litigation. They plainly must. The issue is whether those tools were used here only to control abuse of process, or whether they also prevented unresolved allegations from being tested.
A legal odyssey turned battle for transparency
Millinder’s legal struggle is said to stem from a 2012 contract dispute involving a wind turbine project and Middlesbrough Football Club. The dispute later developed into allegations of financial misconduct, procedural impropriety and the mishandling of evidence.
The draft identifies two key procedural incidents. On 9 January 2017, and again on 6 November 2020, Millinder says crucial PDF material could not be accessed or opened at moments when he relied on it to advance serious allegations. He argues that these incidents contributed to adverse outcomes and, in one instance, to the loss of approximately £1.2 million.
Millinder’s case is that these were not innocent technical problems. He says they formed part of a wider pattern in which evidence was obstructed, the core fraud allegation was avoided, and the court process shifted from adjudicating his claims to restraining him from bringing them.
Contract dispute connected with a wind turbine project and Middlesbrough Football Club begins the litigation history described in the draft.
Millinder says a key PDF-related incident affected the handling of evidence and contributed to adverse rulings.
He alleges that Mr Justice Fancourt was unable to open a crucial PDF bundle relied upon to support allegations of ex parte fraud by non-disclosure.
An all-proceedings order under section 42 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 is said to have barred him from initiating claims without permission.
Millinder is sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt after alleged breaches of the court restrictions.
Civil restraint and section 42
The draft describes an escalation from individual adverse rulings to an Extended Civil Restraint Order, then a General Civil Restraint Order, and finally an all-proceedings order under section 42 of the Senior Courts Act 1981.
From the court’s perspective, such restrictions are used where repeated claims or applications are considered abusive. From Millinder’s perspective, the orders did something more troubling: they prevented his fraud, set-off and jurisdictional arguments from receiving substantive judicial determination.
The court-management rationale
Restraint orders exist to protect opponents, judges and the court system from repeated, abusive, meritless or oppressive litigation.
Millinder’s response
He argues that the restraints were imposed while the core fraud and set-off allegations remained unanswered, turning procedural control into practical exclusion.
Millinder also argues that he has had immunity from civil suit since 21 December 2017, when he says he first gave evidence as a witness for Earth Energy Investments LLP in relation to the Club’s allegedly fraudulent claims. On his case, later decisions failed to address that alleged immunity and the jurisdictional consequences he says followed.
The contempt ruling: punishment or suppression?
Millinder’s refusal to comply with the restrictions led to contempt proceedings. He was found to have breached the section 42 order by continuing to send legal communications and attempting to bring proceedings without permission. In November 2022, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
The judgments, as described in the draft, portray Millinder as someone who ignored rulings, overwhelmed officials with filings and made unfounded allegations against the judiciary. Millinder says the opposite: that his persistence was the only remaining response to a system that refused to engage with evidence of wrongdoing.
Fraud and set-off allegations raised
Millinder says his filings repeatedly advanced allegations that the courts did not properly determine.
Proceedings restricted
The court response escalated through civil restraint and then section 42 restrictions.
Contempt sanction imposed
Millinder was sentenced after being found to have acted in breach of restrictions he says were themselves unlawful or wrongly imposed.
“Every judge who ruled against me failed to consider the evidence,” Millinder asserts. “When I pointed this out, instead of addressing the claims, they labelled me vexatious and falsely accused me of a crime.”
The set-off argument
Millinder’s legal argument places insolvency set-off at the centre of the dispute. He relies on long-established set-off principles, refers to Stein v Blake, and cites the Supreme Court decision in Bresco Electrical Services as supporting aspects of his analysis.
He says he has been dishonestly deprived of statutory set-off rights under insolvency law, including Rule 14.25. He also says that despite the centrality of that point, important judgments failed to mention set-off or Rule 14.25 at all.
Issues that need to be tested on the documents
- How and when the set-off point was pleaded or raised.
- Whether the relevant judgments expressly addressed Rule 14.25.
- How the alleged debt claim was advanced and challenged.
- Whether any proof of debt or insolvency step depended on disputed assumptions.
- Whether the court treated the set-off issue as irrelevant, decided, barred or not properly before it.
The draft also refers to Lord Justice Vos allegedly telling Millinder in 2019, “You are no fool, Mr. Millinder, you know this game as well as I do,” and later describing him as an expert in insolvency law. Millinder’s criticism is that, despite that recognition, the judgment did not engage with the set-off issue he says was decisive.
Was evidence suppressed?
Millinder says he has overwhelming evidence that the courts have ignored or suppressed. The draft refers to an 89-page draft judgment, alleged collateral fraud, AI-assisted forensic analysis, and documents from ongoing litigation said to reveal concealed inconsistencies.
The stronger public-interest question is not whether the article itself can determine those allegations. It cannot. The question is whether the record shows that Millinder’s core allegations were tested, reasoned through and rejected — or whether they were procedurally bypassed.
The AI analysis point
AI-assisted document review may help identify omissions, inconsistencies or missing references across a large record. It does not, by itself, prove fraud or judicial bad faith. Its value is narrower but important: it can help focus the question of whether a central legal issue appears in the determinations where it should have been addressed.
“The fraud was never adjudicated on,” Millinder says. “They don’t even try to argue against the evidence anymore. They just block me procedurally.”
The move to Hong Kong
With UK routes said to be exhausted, Millinder has turned to Hong Kong, where he hopes to bring proceedings against those he accuses of corruption. The draft frames this as an attempt to find a forum outside the reach of what he considers the British judicial establishment.
That route may face formidable obstacles: jurisdiction, recognition of prior English orders, issue estoppel, abuse-of-process arguments, enforcement risk and cost. But the attempt itself illustrates the depth of Millinder’s claim that domestic mechanisms have closed around him.
A different common-law forum may be asked to look at aspects of the dispute from outside the English litigation history.
Prior orders, jurisdictional objections and finality principles may make the route difficult.
The move shows how far a litigant may go when he believes domestic access to justice has failed.
A system that shields itself?
Millinder’s case raises broader concerns about how the legal system deals with persistent litigants who accuse powerful actors of wrongdoing. Courts need mechanisms to control abusive litigation. But those mechanisms must not create public doubt that serious allegations can be avoided by labelling the person raising them as vexatious.
The draft states that Millinder left the country and that the contempt order remains outstanding. He maintains that the judge lacked jurisdiction to impose the sentence and that history will vindicate him. Those claims remain part of his contested narrative, but they sharpen the article’s central theme: the collision between court authority and a litigant who says the authority itself is compromised.
Access to justice
Can a person subject to restraint still obtain a fair hearing on allegations that were not previously determined?
Judicial accountability
Who tests allegations against judges and public authorities where the claimant is already labelled vexatious?
Public confidence
How does the system show that restraint is being used to control abuse, not to suppress discomfort?
“I will not stop until the truth comes out,” Millinder says. “They can block me in the UK, but they can’t stop me from exposing the corruption at the heart of the system.”
Closing point
Paul Millinder’s case sits at the uncomfortable edge of access to justice. If his allegations are wrong, the record should show clearly where they were addressed and why they failed. If the core allegations were never properly tested, then the public-interest concern is serious.
The legitimacy of civil restraint depends on confidence that the court has distinguished persistence from abuse, and allegation from proof, before closing the door. That is why this case still matters.
The question now is whether any forum will examine the substance of Millinder’s claims — or whether the label of vexatious litigant will remain the final answer.
Disclaimer
This article is general public-interest commentary and does not constitute legal advice. It is based on allegations, documents and case narratives described in the source material and should be checked against court orders, judgments, insolvency records, correspondence, regulator responses and primary documents before publication. The article does not assert that any judge, public authority, regulator, company, solicitor, office holder or other person has committed fraud, misconduct or wrongdoing. Insolvency, contempt, civil restraint, defamation, privilege, regulatory and cross-border litigation issues are fact-sensitive, and affected parties should seek advice from a suitably qualified solicitor or regulated adviser.
I am afraid you will never win against a system that is riddled with corruption and founded on fraud. They will do anything and everything to protect their vile secrets. Every judge kin the UK and possibly in America too is a Freemason for a Jew. The Jews established Freemasonry after Oliver Cromwell allowed them back into England after 400 years of exclusion. Freemasonry involves men in necromancy when they are ceremonially killed by three masons, then raised from the dead to become FREE from all Earthly restraints, they take on the persona of Hiram Abiff, the son of a widow of Tyre, thereafter they use the signs and symbols to inform other masons that they are protected by Biblical decree “To pervert not the judgment of the fatherless and widows.” This is fraud in passing themselves off as something they are not. Any judgment made by a Masonic judge is null and void by reason that he is involved in fraud.
Interesting. Judge Tindal in Birmingham produced a Judgement full of (deliberate?) errors and thereby helped a Solicitor and Financial advisor get away with fraud and also helped them terrorise and silence their victim who is a Widow with 6 fatherless child heirs.
Judge Tindal denied being a Freemason though and ended up disappearing.
The evidence of corruption is mounting!!!
A great deal of truth in what he says. The civil judiciary is inherently corrupt today.
Paul assisted me in pursuing a claim relying upon Official Receiver failing to apply mandatory set-off and the High Court treats me in the same way and blatantly failed to engage. What is the 2025 claim???
I’ve lived the experience, with evidential documents proving police and judicial corruption up and into to Londons court of appeal, also
A friend with striking similarities to yours, whom I firmly believe was murdered by those in high places, such documented police evidence and cover up by the coroner at the inquest, with many questions given no answers nor explanations and no way of holding the coroner to account. The judicial system in England is truly corrupt to the core, with Freemason “ brothers” all covering each others backs. I sincerely hope you manage to make a difference.
The same happened to me; a bundle lost/deleted by the tribunal so that the hearing would be conducted without it. I received an abusive letter from the Regional Employment Judge when I asked what had happened to my submitted bundle. I complained to the President of ETs, EJ Barry Clarke in 2023; no reply received. As I wrote to the ET President, ‘While one could accept the possibility of a simple human error in deleting one email, I cannot accept that 10 emails with the attached parts of the bundle for an important preliminary hearing were accidentally deleted. Furthermore, as these 10 emails had the subject heading ‘BUNDLE CONTINUED’, such an error is unlikely to occur. The emails were deleted deliberately in order for the forthcoming preliminary hearing on strike outs to take place without my evidence (- in the same way that the ET ensured that the preliminary hearing conducted by EJ Camp in the parent case in August 2018 proceeded without my bundle of documents).’ I complained to the JACO on 16 January 2024. No reply has been received yet!
I have found that deleting a LIP’s evidence, or suppressing it (- I have evidence of such a complaint against a judge who did it which went to the EAT, then Lord Bean and LJ Vos ) or ignoring it or mis-stating it or minimising its significance are common tactics in a judicial system that does not value much impartiality, respect for the rule of law and fundamental rights.
I have also experienced the tactic of being defamed by judges as a vexatious litigant in order to silence me and prevent me from accessing justice. On 18 October 2024, I received out of the blue a limited restraint order from Mr J. Spencer, who was not a Media and Communications list judge and thus entitled to adjudicate my application, for merely following a judge’s order to me to submit my observations and my CPR right to apply for a default judgment. I replied to the High Court and asked for its rescission on the ground that it was an erroneous and legally void order, but the grounds of my application were not addressed by either Mr J. Spencer or Ms J. Collins-Rice. I had to write to Mr Andy Slaughter, the Chair of the Justice Committee, and to report very serious judicial misconduct and procedural abuse designed to breach individuals’ right to access justice (Article 6(1) ECHR).
Here are some extracts from my letter to the Chair of the Justice Committee of the House of Commons:
‘Regrettably, I must write to you again about the abuse of judicial authority by organs obligated to abide by the law.
On 18 October 2024, and following my letter of complaint to you about Ms Justice Collins-Rice, Mr Justice Spencer abused his judicial authority by ignoring the Civil Procedure Rules and my statutory entitlement to request a default judgment since the Defendants had failed to file a defence. In the appended letters to the High Court, you would find more information about his action and how he misused the ‘totally without merit’ certification to issue a civil constraint on me.
I had also followed an explicit High Court order authorising me to apply to vary it by the 16th of October. This right is guaranteed by law (CPR Rule 3.3(5)). When I exercised my rights, Mr Justice Spencer called my application a totally meritless one and an “abuse of court process” and punished me by restricting my court access.
Mr Justice Spencer’s misconduct got worse. He used the false certifications as a basis for issuing a deceptive civil restraint order containing deliberately contradictory provisions (paragraph 8(i) promises a right to challenge without permissions and an oral hearing while para 4 makes this impossible) to entrap me and to pave the way for harsher restrictions to justice and the removal of my Article 6(1) ECHR rights across all my cases even outside the High Court (an extended civil restraint order) via the improper involvement of a Court of Appeal judge (Lord Justice Warby) in High Court matters. That was a carefully orchestrated and unlawful plan designed to hijack once more the fair determination of my cases.
I devoted ample time to studying Mr. J. Spencer’s template and compiled relevant evidence of its use in other cases involving other parties.
My study and research led me to conclude that it is a systemic “template” used by the court to entrap litigants. It uses paragraph 8(i) to give a false hope of an easy discharge process involving an oral hearing. When a party activates this paragraph, they are then surprised by the application of paragraph 4 which further restricts their access to justice. This creates grounds for even harsher restrictions since the judge would argue that the party had not used the ‘right’ procedure of para 4, the removal of all oral hearings and the effective abolition of the safeguards of Article 6(1) ECHR and thus the HRA 1998 by judicial fiat.
I cannot think of a more egregious manifestation of judicial misconduct and rights abuse. Using false representations of both facts and law to issue deceptive and contradictory civil restraint orders, falsely labelling individuals exercising their statutory and human rights via grounded-in-law applications as vexatious litigants, and then using procedural entrapment to set them up to fail are grossly unethical tactics.
Judges are not expected to lie, step outside the law, invent non-existent rules, ignore written legal submissions, or infringe statutory rights. Courts are meant to be impartial fora and not means of oppression, deception, and entrapment of those seeking justice.
When the truth is ignored, and judges feel free to make false statements to remove people’s statutory and international law rights so easily, the legal system suffers. If, like a referee who only enforces rules against one team, judges disregard basic legal rules to protect the law-breaking party and to punish the innocent one, then such matters are not just about technical legal procedures – they are about basic fairness, honesty, and trust in our institutions and the integrity of the judicial system.
I would like to zoom out of my specific experience and draw your attention to the troubling picture of what appears to be generalised systemic judicial misconduct designed to deny access to justice through deliberate procedural manipulation. I will use the official documents of the High Court to demonstrate this.
Below, you could see the contradictory procedures for challenging a civil restraint order, as stated in Mr J. Spencer’s CRO I received. Please observe that the proper challenge (i.e., 8(i)) which is compliant with the CPR and Article 6(1) ECHR is contained in a Note. Please observe its clear contradiction with para 4.
Please see below how the High Court reacts when a party follows the instruction of para 8(i). The instruction of 8(i) is erased; only paragraph 4 applies, thereby denying the party their fundamental rights and making the civil restraint order virtually unchallengeable. Once again, I use official High Court documents from another case to demonstrate this.
It is difficult for anyone to believe that a court, and more importantly, the UK High Court, would seek to deceive, entrap and disempower parties in such an underhanded manner! Yet the documentary evidence is indisputable.
This is a very serious matter which the Justice Committee of the House of Commons must address urgently in the public interest. The template of civil restraint orders must be suspended immediately and remedial action is urgently needed, as I noted in my letter to Ms Justice Steyn dated 26 October 2024.
I would be pleased to meet with you and/or to provide evidence to the Justice Committee.
I look forward to hearing from you as a matter of urgency. If I do not receive a reply, you would understand that I would have to present the whole file and the evidence to other bodies and individuals.
I would like to thank you in advance.’
I never received a reply. The matter that you have raised in connection with Mr Millinder is very serious and affects a large number of individuals who are unjustly treated and silenced as a result of manufactured and untrue ‘vexatious’ narratives and civil restraint orders. Thank you for reporting on it!
I think the issue is that in all the court hearings. bar one, no judge has acknowledged the breach of contract by MFC in refusing to connect the wind turbine to the two substations, even though a lease premium had been paid>.