Space Energy, during its four-year existence, operated through a variety of corporate entities. HPE alleges that Reform acted as a broker between Space Energy and K2, as well as another broker in Pakistan, thereby enabling the bulk discounted servers to enter the UK and Pakistani markets in breach of HPE's reseller agreements. The court documents alleged that K2 bought more than 17,000 of the racks and servers in 11 of the 22 disputed bulk orders placed by Space Energy. HPE's lawyers, City firm Mishcon de Reya, summarised their case against Sage and Space Energy as follows: From in or around December 2010, the Defendants entered into a common design to deceive the Claimants into selling HPE Products to Space Energy FZE at heavily discounted prices by way of the Big Deal Scheme, in order for those Products to be resold at substantial profit by either (i) parallel importing into the EEA for re-sale and/or (ii) importing into non-EEA countries (in particular the USA) for re-sale.Īmong the companies Space Energy resold servers to were, according to HPE, two now-shuttered British brokers, Reform Technologies and K2IT Ltd. The disappearance of the ring during the search of his home by HPE's lawyers was instrumental in Sage being imprisoned for 18 months for contempt of court. Regular readers will recall that Dodgy Col, now known as Clifford Harper and serving a 33-month prison sentence for fraud, was involved in the curious tale of the £23,000 engagement ring Sage gave to his fiancée Thea Thorpe. Two years later, Sage and Farfan, along with "Dodgy Col" Smith, an employee of Space Energy, had a further meeting with HPE "to verify that Space Energy's business was legitimate". Qais Al Khawaja, a Dubai-based HPE salesman, agreed the initial sales to Space Energy in 2010 on the basis of a solar farm "test site" that Farfan claimed Space Energy had set up in Iraq. Sage's co-defendant, Walter Jason Farfan of Chesham Road, Wigginton, Tring – who used the false name Jason Gooding throughout Space Energy's existence – agreed on behalf of Space Energy not to resell any of the servers it was buying, HPE claimed in the court docs.įarfan was briefly mentioned in Mr Justice Jay's January judgement committing Sage to prison for contempt of court as being "out of the jurisdiction and apparently evasive". He will tell the court: "This exercise is a 'cost-sourcing' exercise, whereby the Claimant is manipulating its monopoly powers to force small business entities to 'pay up' or settle Claims early so it may legitimise to its shareholders for the lack of 'control' the Claimants currently have over such deals and Agreements." Sage claimed in his defence that he was "not aware of any special pricing deals with the Claimants and the Reseller" and labelled HPE's case "highly speculative". Recipients of so-called Big Deal discounts, as they were called in the court filings, were prohibited from reselling any discounted items they bought – and had to give an undertaking that they were the final end user. The last point forms a key part of HPE's case against Sage and Space Energy.
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