London (AFP) – Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky and his former business partner are likely to be forced to repay $1.9 billion they “unlawfully” appropriated from a Ukrainian bank they owned, London’s High Court ruled Wednesday. Judge William Trower found that Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov extracted more than $1.9 billion from PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest bank, in a “highly complex loan recycling scheme” between 2013 and 2014. He added that the men were jointly liable to compensate the bank $1,911,877,385, less the real value of assets such as real estate, petrol stations, and aircraft that were provided to the lender to reduce outstanding balances.
The two men must agree on that figure with the bank, along with the lost interest due to the lender, in coming up with the final compensation package. If it cannot be agreed, the court will decide at a later date. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko welcomed the ruling, calling it “a clear and undeniable victory for Ukraine.” “Once again, Ukraine has proven its ability to uphold justice and defend the interests of its citizens, even beyond our borders,” Svyrydenko posted on social media.
The bank successfully argued that the two men acquired it in order to advance “sham loans” to 50 shell companies—47 in Ukraine and three in Cyprus—”with no business activity and no genuine credit or trading history.” Each of the borrowing entities was “owned and/or controlled by one or both of the individual defendants,” the ruling said. “Amounts were then transferred, either directly or indirectly after one or more intermediate recycling transactions, to the corporate defendants’ accounts,” it added.
The bank, which was nationalized in 2016, wanted to sue the two men in England, in part to obtain the benefit of freezing orders. It therefore had to focus its claim on three English shell companies alleged to be involved in the scheme. In a statement Wednesday, PrivatBank hailed the ruling as a “victory” and said it “could hardly be more damning, as it sets out what has previously been described as a ‘fraud of Byzantine complexity.'”
Kolomoisky, 62, is one of Ukraine’s richest people and a former supporter of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky has long-standing links to Kolomoisky, whose media empire aired his popular “Servant of the People” show and backed his presidential campaign. But Zelensky has vowed to fight corruption since Russia invaded in 2022, and Kolomoisky is currently in prison after being detained on suspicion of fraud and money laundering in September 2023. He is also suspected of organizing a contract killing and has been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship. In 2021, the United States banned Kolomoisky and his family from entry, with the State Department saying that as governor of the eastern Dnipro region between 2014 and 2015 he was involved in “significant corruption.”
© 2024 AFP
