Victor Pinchuk’s claims against fellow oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov will be heard at London’s High Court starting Jan. 25, according to lawyer Laurence Rabinowitz, who will represent Kolomoisky in the trial.
Pinchuk has accused Kolomoisky of orchestrating murder and violent beatings, while Bogolyubov has accused Pinchuk of witness tampering. But though the accusations of violence are riveting, the commercial dispute is what will go to trial.
Pinchuk accuses Kolomoisky and Bugolyubov of failing to transfer Krivorozhskiy Zhelezorudnyy Kombinat, a large ore mining business known as KZhRK in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, for which he paid $143 million in 2005.
The mine was allegedly acquired on the claimant’s behalf during a privatization bid as the defendants’ shareholdings in Ukrrudprom, a group of then majority state-owned iron ore producers which included KZhRK, were given priority.
Pinchuk is now suing for the original investment plus damages of $2 billion. Around $1 billion is the estimated current value of the mine and another $1 billion relates to unpaid dividends.
According to Pinchuk’s claim, the defendants have not only unlawfully kept his shares in KZhRK but it appears that they may have sold 50 percent of mine in 2007 to Rinat Akhmetov, another Ukrainian oligarch.
Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov agree that they received the money but say it was unconnected to the mine and instead was owed to them from a separate deal relating to Nikopol Ferroalloys Plant, the largest ferroalloys producer in Europe.
The defendants also stated that Pinchuk’s claim is due to a sense of entitlement earned from his position as the son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma.
The trial is expected to last eight weeks and is likely to reveal more than a decade’s worth of dirt on the inner circles of Ukraine’s elite.
The public has already been rocked by allegations in made during pretrial hearings in March of murder and beatings.
The claims surfaced when Bogolyubov accused Pinchuk of witness tampering by coercing Ukrainian rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki to give evidence.
Bogolyubov attempted to bring contempt of court proceedings. Pinchuk rebuffed Bogolyubov’s allegations, telling the court that the key witness for the claims, the former chief prosecutor of Ukraine, was involved in covering up murders ordered by Kolomoisky in 2003.
According to Pinchuk, Kolomoisky threatened lawyer Sergei Karpenko with murder unless he released certain client details. Four days later Karpenko’s assistant was beaten in the street and, in the following month, Karpenko was attacked with an iron bar and repeatedly stabbed.
The court then heard that Kolomoisky ordered the killings of those who organized the attacks in an attempted cover-up.
In December, however, Judge Stephen Males ruled that the allegations will not be allowed into the full trial as it would “undoubtedly distort and distract the trial judge” from the civil case.
Another case is related to Ferroalloy Holding, an alleged joint venture between the claimant and defendants created to mutually secure their ownership of several Ukrainian ferroalloy plants. The claims regarding the venture were made in the London International Court of Arbitration, the Limassol District Court in Cyprus and the Wyoming District Court in the US. These cases mostly relate to a US company, Ferrost LLC, which Pinchuk alleges was used by the defendants to “divert ferroalloys and profits from Ferroalloy Holding.”
In October, Zerkalo Nedeli, citing anonymous sources, reported that Pinchuk and Kolomoisky had reached settlement agreement of $500 million. The Kyiv Post was unable to confirm the status of the Ferroalloy Holding case.
Kyiv Post staff writer Isobel Koshiw can be reached at [email protected]
(Victor Pinchuk v. Gennadiy Borisovich Bogolyubov & Anr in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division case no CL-2013-000814).
