London court finds Kolomoiskyi and Boholiubov guilty of withdrawing funds from PrivatBank
On July 30, the High Court of London ruled in favor of state-owned PrivatBank in the case against its former owners, Ihor Kolomoiskyi and Hennadii Boholiubov. The court found that they illegally withdrew about USD 2 billion from the bank through a complex refinancing scheme that acted in their interests.
This was reported by the company's press service.
The court completely rejected the defendants' objections, finding them dishonest, and separately noted the facts of their destruction of documents that could have been evidence in the case. Kolomoiskyi and Boholiubov did not provide evidence during the consideration of the case on the merits in 2023.
The final amount of the obligations has yet to be determined, but it is estimated that it will exceed USD 2 billion, including interest and court costs. The bank plans to move on to the stage of recovering damages, including from the defendants' assets that have been under arrest since 2017.
Judge Trauer rejected claims by Ihor Kolomoiskyi and Hennadii Boholiubov that there was no evidence linking them to the financial transactions at issue. The ruling stated that their objections were "entirely based on dishonest grounds."
The judge also noted that Kolomoiskyi "appeared to consider himself above the law," and that Boholiubov's actions, which used misleading documents to distance himself from fraudulent schemes, were "dishonest."
PrivatBank filed a lawsuit against its former owners and six affiliates in 2017, seeking USD 1.9 billion in compensation. The court's decision is an important step in the long-term process of returning the withdrawn funds to the state.
As a reminder, the Cassation Economic Court within the Supreme Court confirmed the impossibility of returning the state-owned Privatbank to its former owners and confirmed the legality of closing the proceedings in case No. 910/1834/19 based on the claim of the bank's ex-shareholder I. Kolomoiskyi and the company Triantal Investments LTD.