Liquidators acting for two companies in the collapsed Rockfire Group have filed High Court claims against Royal Bank of Scotland seeking to recover roughly £250mn, alleging the NatWest-owned lender processed unauthorised payments that drained funds from an investment vehicle tied to one of the largest local authority financial scandals in England.
Rockfire Capital and Rockfire Investment Finance are pursuing separate sums of £70mn and £179mn, plus interest, from RBS, arguing the bank should have blocked transfers out of accounts once the companies were insolvent or approaching insolvency.
The claims sit alongside a parallel High Court action brought by Thurrock Council, which invested close to £400mn in Rockfire-issued renewable energy bonds between 2017 and 2020 before declaring effective bankruptcy in December 2022 under debts that reached £1.5bn.
The council’s own claim, targeting former Rockfire director Liam Kavanagh and Rockfire Capital, seeks to recover around £150mn it says was diverted to fund personal purchases rather than solar infrastructure. Kavanagh has denied the allegations and intends to contest them at trial.
The Serious Fraud Office’s involvement raises the regulatory stakes considerably. Since opening a formal investigation into Rockfire Investment Finance, the SFO has issued section 2 notices compelling financial institutions to hand over records connected to the group’s collapse, a step that typically signals an active evidence-gathering phase rather than a preliminary inquiry.
A civil claim running in parallel with a criminal fraud investigation increases the likelihood that material disclosed in one process surfaces in the other, complicating the bank’s defence strategy and any settlement calculus for both RBS and NatWest.
Courts have grown more willing, in the wave of bank-liability litigation since the 2008 financial crisis, to scrutinise whether banks met a duty to interrogate suspicious payment patterns rather than simply process instructions from authorised signatories.
Liquidators at Begbies Traynor, who have overseen Rockfire Capital’s administration since 2020, will need to coordinate closely with Thurrock Council’s own legal team to avoid duplicative disclosure applications given the overlapping factual matrix between the two High Court actions.
NatWest has confirmed it will defend both cases. With the SFO’s investigation ongoing and no trial date yet fixed, firms advising financial institutions on payment-processing liability should expect this claim to become a reference point for how courts treat bank due-diligence obligations in insolvency-adjacent fraud.
Update 02/07/26
Mr Kavanagh has provided the following response to the allegations:
“Mr Kavanagh strenuously denies the allegations made against him in the proceedings brought by Thurrock Borough Council and will contest them at trial. Mr Kavanagh was entitled to the monies he received under the parties’ arrangements. There was no misrepresentation. Thurrock Council was legally represented and had the opportunity to carry out whatever due diligence it considered appropriate.
Government-appointed inspectors have found that Thurrock Council pursued a wide-ranging investment strategy, including investments entirely unconnected to Mr Kavanagh, which ultimately proved loss-making as a result of high-risk decisions taken without proper care, diligence or oversight. There were repeated failures in that strategy, and the Council’s own failings led it, instead of making appropriately diversified investments, to become heavily concentrated in the solar renewables sector. Those were the Council’s decisions. They were not the product of any wrongdoing by Mr Kavanagh or Rockfire Capital. Neither Mr Kavanagh nor Rockfire Capital was acting as the Council’s investment adviser.
Mr Kavanagh is not a party to the proceedings brought by Rockfire Investment Finance or other companies against RBS/Natwest, he has not been served with any of the relevant Court documents and is therefore not in a position to comment on the litigation and what has been alleged.”