After more than three years of dodging court orders to explain his company’s finances, the financier Lars Windhorst was given an 18-month suspended committal for contempt. He appealed both its length and its conditions. On 17 July 2026 the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. In Windhorst v ADS Securities LLC [2026] EWCA Civ 905, the Court upheld the sentence and a positive condition requiring him to hand over documents.
What the case was about
ADS Securities holds a judgment against Tennor Holding BV — Mr Windhorst’s company — for about €27.2 million, unpaid since 2022 (para 5). Mr Windhorst is Tennor’s controlling mind, its beneficial owner and CEO (para 6). To learn about Tennor’s means, ADS pursued an examination of him under CPR Part 71; but across more than three and a half years and a long series of orders, he repeatedly failed to attend, at one point breaching his own undertaking to the court to do so (paras 6–8). Tennor was then declared bankrupt in the Netherlands (para 9). Mrs Justice Dias found him in contempt and imposed 18 months’ imprisonment suspended on conditions, one of which required him to produce, at least 14 days before the examination hearing, all documents in Tennor’s control relating to its means of paying the debt (paras 4, 19). He appealed on three grounds: that the term was excessive, that the documents condition was unfair, and that the court had no jurisdiction to impose a positive condition of that kind (paras 22–24).
What the Court of Appeal decided
Lord Justice Fraser — with whom Lord Justice Newey agreed — dismissed all three grounds (paras 56–57). The 18-month term was not manifestly excessive. This was a serious and prolonged contempt, which the judge regarded as involving a breach “among the most serious types of contempt” (para 13); breaching a voluntary undertaking as well as court orders made it worse (paras 36–38). The documents condition was not unfair — it merely required, a little earlier, what Mr Windhorst had long been ordered to produce anyway, and it falls to be read subject to the “control” test in CPR Part 31 (paras 39, 52). And CPR Part 71, which governs the examination of judgment debtors, does not oust the court’s inherent jurisdiction to attach a positive condition to a suspended committal: Part 81 expressly preserves the substantive law of contempt, and the court has long had power to suspend committal “on any terms which seem appropriate” (paras 46–47, 55). The sentence and its conditions therefore stood.
Why it matters
- Breaching an undertaking aggravates a contempt. An undertaking is a voluntary promise to the court; breaking it is typically more serious than breaching an order alone, and here Mr Windhorst had done both (para 36).
- Positive conditions can be attached to a suspended committal — within limits. The court’s inherent jurisdiction allows it to suspend committal on a requirement to do something, such as producing documents, and CPR Part 71 does not cut that power down; but the condition must be clear and appropriate, and here it largely brought forward compliance the contemnor already owed rather than imposing something unrelated (paras 42, 46–49, 55).
- Contempt sentence appeals turn on the case, not a tariff. There are no sentencing guidelines for contempt and comparisons with other cases are of limited use; 18 months — three quarters of the statutory two-year maximum — was within the range reasonably open on these facts (paras 34, 38, 51).
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Read the full judgment: Windhorst v ADS Securities LLC [2026] EWCA Civ 905 (The National Archives).