BALTIMORE, Maryland (Reuters) — A New York attorney has accused a British private intelligence firm of paying mercenary hackers who he says tipped a court battle in his opponents’ favor.

In a legal motion filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court, Daniel Feldman accused the London-based investigations firm Vantage Intelligence of paying the spies who intercepted privileged communications with his attorneys around 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Feldman said the hacking occurred when he was in a court battle with Vantage’s clients, a group of companies tied to the defunct Russian oil giant Yukos, over allegations of self-dealing.

Feldman denied wrongdoing, but in 2019 he was found liable for breaching his fiduciary duties to several of the Yukos-related entities, although the jury found no evidence of harm and fined him a nominal $5. Feldman, whose law license was suspended for a year in the wake of the verdict, is now seeking to have the judgment thrown out, arguing the case was irrevocably tainted by hacking.

Attempts to contact the Yukos-related entities, which are based out of the British Virgin Islands and the Netherlands, were unsuccessful. US attorneys listed for the firms did not return repeated messages seeking comment.

Vantage referred questions to a lawyer who did not return messages seeking........

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