London court expands worldwide arrest of assets of Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov
The High Court of London has expanded the possibilities for a worldwide seizure of the assets of ex-shareholders of Privatbank Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov.
This is stated in the court decision in case BL-2017-000665, the press service of Privatbank in a comment EP.
The decision concerns a case in which Privatbank seeks to return the funds withdrawn from the bank on the eve of nationalization and repay the bank’s unfulfilled refinancing obligations.
Privatbank petitioned for the arrest of the defendants’ assets for the period of the case in the amount of $ 3 billion, and in 2017 the High Court of London He has made a decision in favor of the bank. Thus, a worldwide arrest was made of the assets of Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov, as well as six companies that they probably control.
By its decision of January 31, 2023, the court, at the request of Privatbank, decided to actually expand the possibilities for worldwide seizure of assets.
“The recent decision of the English court to grant permission to the bank to receive foreign seizure orders and require defendants to provide further information on the disclosure of assets, which will allow to monitor the execution of seizure orders, is an extremely positive development for the bank.”, — noted in the press service of Privatbank.
“I am convinced that, with respect to the first respondent, the disclosure of bank account information is necessary for the proper control of worldwide asset seizure (WAA) activities and is proportionate. … This, in my (the judge’s) opinion, is a legitimate attempt by the plaintiff to obtain disclosure of easily identifiable assets that have always been in the BAA area and were subject to disclosure as such“, the court decision says.
Privatbank believes the ruling will help ensure that any court decision that comes after the hearing on the merits, due to begin in June 2023, is effectively enforced.
Reminder:
In December 2016, the government of Ukraine, at the suggestion of the National Bank and the shareholders of Privatbank, the largest of which at that time were Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov, decided to nationalization Privatbank.
The bank passed into state ownership, the state spent more than 155.3 billion hryvnias on its additional capitalization. Based on the results of the audit, the detective agency Kroll confirmed that PrivatBank was the object of large-scale fraudulent activitiesresulting in a loss of $5.5 billion.
Ex-shareholders of the bank are challenging the decision on nationalization in a number of Ukrainian and foreign courts.
In December 2017 PrivatBank sued in the High Court of London against Igor Kolomoisky, Gennady Bogolyubov, as well as Teamtrend Ltd., Trade Point Agro Ltd., Collyer Ltd., Rossyan Investing Corp., Milbert Ventures Inc. and ZAO Ukrtransitservice Ltd, which are likely to be owned or controlled by them.
A year later, the court recognized that PrivatBank filed a lawsuit in order to obtain the jurisdiction of the London court to file a lawsuit against Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov. At the same time, the judge recognized that the bank had reasonable claims against Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov for at least several million dollars.
However, the court ordered worldwide asset seizure ex-owners of the bank and these six companies in the amount of more than $2.5 billion.
Following the meeting on January 19, 2018, the High Court of London extended the order on the worldwide arrest of the assets of the former owners of Privatbank, Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov, until the next relevant court order. At the same time, the court ordered the defendants to disclose information about all their assets to a limited circle of persons directly involved in the consideration of the case.
Dana Gordiychuk, Yaroslav Vinokurov
