Update, Nov. 4, 2023: What was previously announced as a resolution to this case was not in fact its complete end. The BBC reports today that James Watt's criminal fraud prosecution against Emili Ziem "has ended” with Ziem “being acquitted of all charges." According to the report: "Ms Ziem has now been cleared of criminal fraud after lawyers for Mr Watt offered no evidence." It goes on to note that Watt’s lawyers say they didn’t want to proceed further against Ziem because of an “earlier fraud finding in the civil case in Scotland, her recent bankruptcy and personal factors.”
In a statement to Good Beer Hunting, Ziem says: "It is good that this is over and I feel free."
"I had mentally moved on from this quite sometime ago, so it has been nothing short of exhausting having to still deal with it," she says. "I feel hopeful that this time around James will finally let this go."
Update, Sept. 29, 2022: There has been a resolution to the Scottish civil case between BrewDog CEO James Watt and his former romantic partner, Emili Ziem, though complete records have not been made publicly available by the court. Reports of a conclusion to the case against Ziem were first published in the Scottish Sun on Sept. 26.
A partial document provided to Good Beer Hunting appears to be a section of the court’s decision in this case. It states that Ziem was given Bitcoin payments by Watt as a result of her “fraudulent misrepresentation” and orders Ziem to pay Watt a total of £701,261.09 ($774,721.70), plus unspecified procedural expenses. The document does not specify what Ziem fraudulently represented.
The Scottish civil case is just one of two legal actions Watt has taken against Zeim. A criminal case he brought against Ziem in London remains ongoing. It is unclear whether the court’s decision in Scotland will have any bearing on that second case.
According to a representative from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals and Ziem herself, Ziem ceased to be represented by lawyers in the Scottish case as of July. The court then ruled in early September in favor of Watt, the plaintiff, seeing no defense from Ziem. In an email to Good Beer Hunting, Stuart Ritchie, head of media and judicial communications for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, wrote that Ziem’s legal representation “withdrew from acting and no new agents came in for the defender,” effectively ending her defense. The lawyer previously representing Ziem in the Scottish case, Neil Stewart, declined to comment.
It’s not known whether the outcome of the case would have been different had Ziem presented a defense.
Ziem says she dismissed Stewart in July because she claims a hearing in the case was canceled by the court. She says she then assumed the case was delayed and that she could hire another lawyer in the future if needed. She says she received no communication from the court since July, and that she learned of the resolution to the case when a Scottish Sun journalist contacted her earlier this month.
Because there was no “substantive hearing in the case,” according Ritchie, there are no publicly available court documents related to the case’s resolution.
Watt posted on LinkedIn and other social media Sept. 26 that he had been “vindicated” by the courts. “Earlier this month, the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that Ms. Ziem, a woman I was briefly in a relationship with, committed a serious fraud against me involving lies & malicious communications and ordered that she repay £600,000 that she fraudulently obtained from me (this includes expenses). If I ever see a penny [sic] the money again, I intend to give it all to charity,” Watt wrote on LinkedIn.
Ziem disputes the facts of the Scottish case, and maintains that she was not aware of ongoing legal proceedings against her.
“It is important to understand that this case is linked to ongoing, live proceedings in England and, although I of course vehemently deny the allegations and very much want to give my account, I have taken legal advice and it would not be appropriate for me to comment further at this time,” Ziem wrote in a statement to GBH.
The Scottish court’s finding in Watt’s favor bolsters his long-standing claims of a conspiracy committed against him. However, this case against Ziem appears to be largely unrelated to some former BrewDog workers’ criticism of BrewDog as an intimidating, hostile, and misogynistic work environment. (Ziem has never been employed by BrewDog.)
(For a full report on this case, see the original story below.)
Editor’s note (5/31/2022): This article was originally published on May 6, 2022. It was temporarily unpublished after receiving a cease and desist letter from James Watt’s attorneys. The story is now republished after thorough legal review by our U.K.-based litigators specializing in media and communications issues.
THE GIST
BrewDog co-founder and CEO James Watt has spent months publicly claiming a criminal conspiracy led by former employees and others was created to ruin his reputation and damage his company. Documents and testimonies provided to Good Beer Hunting appear to show that Watt may have tried to uncover this alleged plot by paying a former romantic partner nearly £100,000 ($125,000 USD) in Bitcoin to gather information on ex-BrewDog staff.
The woman says Watt asked her to provide him with audio recordings, private chat messages, and other information that could potentially aid him in discovering the identities of people he sees as his enemies and use as evidence of a conspiracy against him. Court documents from upcoming litigation suggest that Watt paid Emili Ziem, a bioprocess engineering scientist and part-time model who lives in Norway, to uncover the information he sought. Now, he is alleging the information she provided was fraudulent and malicious in intent. The claim is not focused on whether or not he sought the information, but that what was provided may have been misleading or fake.
While Ziem says a connection between her and Watt goes back for more than a year, it was only recently things apparently turned sour.
Watt filed a civil lawsuit in Scottish court against her as well as a private criminal prosecution against her in the U.K., as first reported by The Guardian.
Ziem appears to be the woman Watt referenced as an “antagonist” in an April 10 news story published in London’s The Times. In the article, and in several other public statements, Watt has claimed that a small group of former BrewDog employees and their acquaintances who have “a personal vendetta against him” have “attacked, stalked, besmirched and blackmailed” him as part of a criminal conspiracy.
Watt has publicly stated that false allegations and conspiracies against him are “all very, very likely to end up in court.” Watt has not yet produced any public evidence of this conspiracy. The case is set as docket A25/22, James Watt v Emili Ziem.
In uncovering information about Watt's interactions with Ziem and others, Good Beer Hunting conducted multiple interviews with people involved and reviewed documents, emails, and a recording provided by Ziem. BrewDog declined two requests for an interview and Watt did not respond to an email and an Instagram message requesting an interview. Because of this, the full intent of interactions between Watt and Ziem aren't entirely clear. However, sources corroborated aspects of Ziem's story and one of her lawyers confirmed the veracity of court documents that Ziem shared with Good Beer Hunting.
Ziem says she and Watt first began communicating on Instagram in November 2020 and carried on a relationship—which she describes as sometimes romantic—between then and August 2021. During their relationship, in June 2021, images captured in the company's Equity for Punks online forums show that Watt made his first references to a conspiracy against him. According to Ziem, and in communications reviewed by Good Beer Hunting that appear to take place between her and a person who is listed as “James Watt,” the person who is allegedly Watt is shown to seek Ziem’s help to bolster an assertion that people were plotting against them. This included an offer to pay her.
It’s at this point the relationship—and the agreement that would lead to the current legal dispute—seems to have changed course.
Watt will argue in court that he was tricked by Ziem, who he claims was part of a larger plot and, according to reporting in The Guardian, was “intending to make a gain” for herself.
Ziem, meanwhile, says she gathered information from others at Watt’s request.
According to Watt's suit, the argument isn't whether he requested this information, but whether the information provided was legitimate and potentially part of a larger conspiracy.
Individuals contacted by Ziem in the summer of 2021 give credence to her story in conversations with Good Beer Hunting. But given Watt’s lawsuit and public displays, it’s clear he feels deceived from what he thought was a goodwill effort to root out bad actors working against him.
On June 7, 2021, after Ziem alerted a person who appears to be Watt via text that she set up an account with Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, she received a response: “I need your wallet number or the email address your account [is] set up with.” Over the next six hours, texts show Ziem being asked for information about a former BrewDog employee with administrative access to a Facebook group made up of former employees. Ziem responded she was “on it” and asked for the other person’s email address. Thirty-five minutes later, a text from the other account responded, “None of those names sound familiar.”
A court questionnaire sent to Ziem—which she says came from Watt’s lawyers and the existence of which was confirmed by her own lawyers at London’s Bark&co—shows that Watt allegedly paid Ziem roughly 3.21 Bitcoin ($125,000 USD at the time) over the course of their correspondence. (A second lawyer representing Ziem in Scottish court says he is “familiar with” the document but would not provide further comment.) Some of these payments occurred in June 2021. Additional messages Ziem alleges were sent between her and Watt suggest that she was offered more Bitcoin if she would record phone calls or in-person conversations, as well as share text messages. She says one person she was asked to seek out for information was a former romantic partner of Watt’s.
(Lawyers representing Ziem would not verify whether these specific messages were verifiable or part of a legal defense, but the filings from Watt's lawsuit make it clear that he and Ziem communicated about her ability to provide him with the identities of people he believed to be working against him.)
Last May and June, Ziem says she shared with Watt details of conversations she had with some of his social media critics and a person she says is a former romantic partner of his.
She says she provided screenshots of chats and at least one recorded phone call. Ziem says an incoming call she recorded came to her phone late at night from a private number and the voice was a woman whose identity she does not know.
In an audio recording Ziem provided to Good Beer Hunting, two people can be heard discussing Watt, his romantic relationships, and allusions to past romantic partners who may be angry with him.
The accuracy of the recording could not be independently verified, although one of the voices is Ziem. The other could not be identified.
Months later, in August, 2021, Ziem says Watt invited her to his lawyer’s office to sign a legal document to admit to a role in a conspiracy, or, according to her account of the meeting, she would have to return the Bitcoin payments. It is not clear what prompted the meeting request, but the Bitcoin payments appear to be a central point of Watt’s accusations against Ziem: A legal questionnaire sent to Ziem as part of the civil case asks 14 questions related to Bitcoin or financial payments.
Watt’s lawyers are conducting a related investigation into Ziem for offenses including fraud, computer misuse, malicious communications, and harassment as part of a criminal private prosecution in a London-based court.
Documents reviewed by Good Beer Hunting, as well as The Guardian’s reporting, indicate Watt suspects Ziem of using social media accounts and altered screenshots to troll and harass him and encourage others to do the same.
In the questionnaire sent to Ziem, Watt’s legal team asks questions about any contact she may have had with now-deleted Instagram accounts as well as people identified by name. Those people include members of Punks With Purpose (a collective of former BrewDog employees who advocate for reforms at the company), former BrewDog employees, and journalists. The document asks questions including: “Did you then or do you now have any relationship, personal or otherwise, with any of those responsible for trolling JW?” and “Have you ever had any direct contact (in person, online or via calls/messaging) with any of those responsible for trolling JW? If so, please provide full details and copies of any messages retained.”
In a statement provided to Good Beer Hunting, Ziem’s legal team at Bark&co says: “Emili Ziem is entirely innocent of these charges, she vehemently denies any wrongdoing and intends to defend these allegations robustly at trial in the Crown Court.”
WHY IT MATTERS
Watt’s assertion that there is a concerted, illegal effort to harm his and BrewDog’s reputation has been at the heart of his defense against criticism by former employees. These lawsuits will speak to the strength of those assertions.
Ziem says that while she did have contact with former employees of BrewDog, as well as other individuals personally connected to Watt, it was at Watt’s behest. In text messages that appear to be between Ziem and another person listed as “James Watt” provided to Good Beer Hunting, Ziem is asked in June 2021 to “find out who the ex BD [BrewDog] Facebook admin person is.” Ziem says the request refers to a Facebook group made up of people who later founded Punks With Purpose.
Reporting from London’s The Guardian has shown Watt using other means to uncover information: The outlet found Watt hired private investigators to collect information on his perceived enemies, and that he has been accused of intimidating people who appeared in a BBC documentary exploring BrewDog’s corporate culture.
In a message dated June 9, Ziem is asked to record the audio of an upcoming phone call. In the message, reviewed by Good Beer Hunting, the person writes to Ziem: “If you are willing to and could record the call you can’t do this on your phone but just chat to her on speaker and record it on your computer. Double the usual Bitcoin rate if you want to do this, but please don’t feel you have to!! Happy for you just to brief me afterwards too.”
Ziem says this was a call between her and a woman with whom she believes Watt had previously had romantic contact. That woman—who asked not to be named so as not to damage her career—confirms the call and that she suspected Ziem was asked to record it.
Ziem says that she was initially willing to have conversations with writers, former BrewDog employees, and former romantic partners who were critical of Watt, in a role that she describes as similar to that of a mediator. She conducted those conversations between May and September 2021.
“At first James had asked me to engage and see if I could help in any way because he felt like they weren’t open to talking to him directly,” Ziem says. She says she also wanted to know whether allegations of harassment and intimidation against Watt by former employees and romantic partners were true, “because if they were, then I don’t know if this was a situation that was worth helping.”
Three women who had contact with Ziem and who spoke to Good Beer Hunting about those interactions say Ziem did not ask them to participate in a plot or conspiracy. If anything, they say they suspected Watt was using Ziem to gather information about them and others.
Fanny Wandel, a bar manager in Copenhagen and a workers’ rights activist who has been critical of BrewDog on her personal Instagram account, says she exchanged messages with Ziem between Aug. 11-17, 2021. During that time, Wandel says, she got the impression Ziem was seeking information on behalf of Watt—not that Ziem was seeking to conspire against him.
Wandel says she worries that Ziem was caught up in an effort to gather information to confirm suspicions of the conspiracy Watt has often cited.
Since the meeting at Watt’s lawyer’s office in August, Ziem says Watt has called her to have conversations that devolved into unproductive interactions. She says she stopped speaking to him in late February 2022, at which point he filed the civil lawsuit against her. Ziem says the ongoing lawsuit and allegations have given her anxiety. She feels lost and alone as a result of it.
Currently, the cases against Ziem are ongoing, and more public updates are expected. Ziem says there is no court date set and that she has until the end of May to submit her defense to the court. The civil case, she says, seeks the £100,000 Watt had paid Ziem last year, as well as an additional £500,000 ($625,000) in damages.
But the stakes in this case are not only monetary. At issue is Watt’s claims of a criminal conspiracy against him by former employees and their acquaintances. That claim has been his most strident defense against more than a year of persistent calls from former employees to change the culture and leadership style at BrewDog.
As these court cases proceed, they’re likely to provide details that speak to the veracity, or falsehood, of Watt’s assertions.
Words by Kate Bernot