The battle for the tattered remains of Halliwells "the sky's the limit" LLP has started in earnest. And on Wednesday an extraordinary first shot was fired when it was alleged that minutes of a meeting about the £20 million reverse premium pocketed by a select group of the firm's former equity partners had been falsified.

The High Court is currently hearing the case of Michael Burns, a former Halliwells partner (and now of the DLA Piper parish). Burns left just before Halliwells slipped beneath the waves, executing a retirement deed purporting to sever all relations between him and the firm. But that hasn't stopped the liquidators coming after him (and other partners) in an attempt to recoup some cash, in particular their chunks of the £20 million "trousergate" payment.

Halliwells: appearing in a courtroom near you soon

On Wednesday, the liquidators argued that the retirement deed could not absolve Burns of liability as the manner of the firm's demise was a bit, umm, fishy. To further their claim, the liquidators referred to minutes of a meeting dealing with the back-hander reverse premium secretly funnelled out of the firm by its senior equity partners. They claimed the minutes had been doctored, and read out correspondence from the firm's senior management asking for the reverse premium payments to be shushed up. Which doesn't sound great.

It's long been understood that the defunct firm's partnership deed was amended in secret (or at least with only the 21 major beneficiaries of the free cash in attendance), but this is a fresh twist in the long-running affair. While there have been whispers of malfeasance doing the rounds for some time, this is their first public airing. With the mediation soon to begin between the firm's administrators and its former partners (now spread like storm-blown leaves amongst other firms), RollOnFriday waits excitedly for future developments.