The U.K. Supreme Court on Feb. 1 ordered oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov to pay PrivatBank’s legal fees to the tune of 1 million pounds.
The oligarchs used to own PrivatBank until it was nationalized in 2016. Since then, the bank has fought its former owners in half a dozen countries, trying to reclaim the $5.5 billion they allegedly stole using insider lending and offshore companies.
The bank claims that a big chunk of that money was siphoned through the U.K. and filed a $1.9 billion lawsuit in the U.K. in 2017. The High Court ruled that the case has no British jurisdiction in December 2018 but the Court of Appeals overturned that decision in November 2019. Interest has caused the original claim to balloon to $3.75 billion.
Supreme Court Senior Costs Judge Andrew Gordon-Saker ordered the payment of 1 million pounds to be made by March 15.
The respondents have so far paid more than 12 million pounds for the bank’s U.K. legal fees plus interest, according to PrivatBank’s press service. This includes the return of 7.5 million pounds that the bank had to pay to the respondents in 2018.
The total amount of legal expenses the oligarchs will have to pay will be determined at hearings held between October 2021 and February 2022.
PrivatBank is also clashing against Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov in Ukraine, U.S., Switzerland, Cyprus and Israel.
