“…Recently, some examples have emerged indicating that the chiral phosphoric acid undergoes a substitution reaction with the substrate, where the acid catalyst functions as a nucleophile, to generate the corresponding phosphate ester as the reactive intermediate. 12 As depicted in Scheme 4 , in principle, phosphorimidate B , which was generated through the S N 2 reaction of catalyst 3 with 1 at the terminal allylic position far from R group, might be involved as the reactive intermediate in the present reaction. Because the S N 2 reaction, giving B with inversion at the substitution site, followed by the syn -S N 2′ reaction through D , namely, the net anti -S N 2′ pathway, also fulfils the requirement of the experimental evidence obtained in the deuterated substrate experiment as shown in Scheme 3 .…”