Australia, Aug. 16 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement on July 15:

1. The plaintiff seeks orders for the continuation of freezing orders made by Rothman J on 23 May 2025 in respect of 7 of the 16 defendants who she has sued in these proceedings.

2. The original orders were made ex parte. Notice was then given to the defendants. The matter then came back before Wright J on 29 May 2025. His Honour made orders extending and modifying the operation of the freezing orders until a full hearing.

3. The matter was then listed before me for two days on 14 and 15 July 2025. I am delivering this ex tempore judgment at the end of the hearing, because the plaintiff is unrepresented, as are two of the other parties subject to the orders, being the seventh and ninth defendants.

4. Mr Allen of counsel appeared on behalf of the parties who are described as the Pucci defendants, being the first, second, third, sixth and sixteenth defendants. The Pucci defendants submit that the freezing orders should not be continued against them and thus ask that the orders be discharged.

5. The seventh defendant, Ms Ergashova, sought to appear approximately halfway through the hearing. She asked to also represent her daughter, the ninth defendant.

6. She made submissions opposing the extension of any orders as against her and her daughter, relying on her own affidavit and one from her daughter.

Background

7. The background to the current application is of some complexity and notoriety.

8. By way of a statement of claim filed on 15 May 2025, the plaintiff seeks orders in the nature of damages and declarations from sixteen defendants.

9. She says that in the second half of 2020, all of these defendants were involved in a conspiracy to defraud, impersonate, intimidate, incriminate, and deport her.

10. She claims that in November 2020, she lent the sum of approximately $490,000 to the first defendant who is given various names in the statement of claim but is generally known as Enrico Pucci. She says that at the time of the loan to the first defendant, she was in a romantic relationship with him with the idea that they would be getting married.

11. The plaintiff says that she was deceived and misled into providing a short-term loan to the first defendant (she believed for a period of two weeks), and that that money has never been returned to her.

12. She says that she was induced into lending the money to the first defendant through the conduct of the first defendant and all of the other defendants who (on her case) were engaged in a conspiracy to defraud her, that is, to cause her to give the money to the first defendant in circumstances in which they would have been aware that he would be unlikely to repay the loan.

*Rest of the document can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/19881c8707625d3cddbee699)

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