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bne November 2019 Companies & Markets I 15
of $100mn. In May 2018, the London arbitration court ruled in favour of Raga, thus making SCM liable to pay about $821mn in compensation. As a part of litigation, some of SCM's Cyprian assets were frozen between December 2017 and June 2018.
“Besides the settlement with Raga, SCM will have to resolve an outstanding conflict with Oschadbank, which managed to arrest Ukrtelecom’s 92.7% stake pledged under a UAH1.8bn loan to an SCM subsidiary. Ukrtelecom’s value is definitely much smaller than the amount claimed by Raga ($821mn),
also taking into account the financials claims of Oschadbank and Ukreximbank,” Alexander Paraschiy of Concorde Capital said in a note. “Therefore, there is no reason for SCM to pay that amount to Raga. Most likely, the new deal assumes
a much smaller payment by SCM (no more than 50% of that amount). As we assumed before, the key source of funds for
a possible payment to Raga could be dividends from Metinvest. Now that the conflict with Raga has been resolved, SCM
is able to settle issues with state banks and re-establish its ownership rights over 92.8% stake in Ukrtelecom.”
Ukraine's PrivatBank wins London case blocking oligarch Kolomoisky from unfreezing $2bn in assets
IntelliNews Pro
Ukraine’s state-owned PrivatBank has won a case blocking oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and his partners from unfreezing $2bn in assets that were seized
by a London court in 2017, as part of the bank’s efforts
to recover more than $7.2bn looted from the bank under its old ownership.
The ruling means that PrivatBank, which is pursuing a raft of legal suits against the oligarch, can go ahead with $3bn worth of claims against Kolomoisky in UK courts.
PrivatBank is fighting another case in the US where it claims Kolomoisky laundered over $470bn through shell companies in the state of Delaware.
The Court of Appeal in England and Wales has been considering an appeal by largest Ukrainian lender PrivatBank against a first instance decision on a discrepancy in the jurisdiction of the bank's claim against ex-owners, oligarchs Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Bogolyubov, after the same court ruled in December 2017 to freeze $2bn worth of worldwide assets of the former owners, including six companies controlled by Kolomoisky and his partner Bogolyubov, worth more than $2.5bn. The court also established a weekly limit of £20,000 on Kolomoisky’s personal expenses.
Kolomoisky’s lawyers failed to persuade the English Court of Appeal (COA) that fraud claims brought against the pair by PrivatBank should not be litigated in the UK jurisdiction.
Free to pursue
PrivatBank is now free to pursue a lawsuit claiming that Kolomoisky perpetrated fraud on a massive scale by using shell companies owned by the shareholders to empty the bank of
money in a scam first exposed in detail by bne IntelliNews
in a cover feature “Privat investigations” in November 2016. The story caused such a scandal in Kyiv that the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) nationalised PrivatBank a month later.
Following the state’s takeover, the NBU found that 99% of the loans on the bank’s books were fake and had to pump more than $5bn into the bank to rescue it from collapse. The new PrivatBank CFO Anna Samarina told bne IntelliNews in an interview in June that the bank has updated its estimate of what it calls “fraud loans” to UAH200bn, or $7.6bn, more
“PrivatBank is fighting another case in the US where it claims Kolomoisky laundered over $470bn through shell companies in the state of Delaware”
than the initial NBU estimate of $5.5bn. While the levels of non-performing loans (NLPs) in Ukraine recently fell to below 50% for the first time in years as the sector returns to profit, PrivatBank remains one of the most heavily impaired banks in the country with NPLs of more than 80% of its loan book.
Kolomoisky’s relentless quest to either get his bank back or at least force $2bn of compensation from the state is causing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy real problems as the issue of the denationalisation of the bank has become
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