State-owned PrivatBank on Aug. 18 took steps to prevent oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennady Boholyubov and their associate Vyacheslav Kartashev from dodging a $600 million lawsuit in Israel.
The Tel Aviv complaint, accusing the trio of defrauding PrivatBank and laundering the money in Israel, has been published in the local state-owned newspaper Voice of Ukraine. The defendants now have 60 days to respond. Otherwise, the case will start in Tel Aviv.
The Israeli case is part of a series of lawsuits in different jurisdictions, in which PrivatBank is trying to recover money allegedly stolen from the bank by the oligarchs, who were its previous owners.
A total of $5.5 billion were vacuumed from PrivatBank before the bank’s nationalization in 2016, according to forensic firm Kroll.
The Israeli case was launched in December 2019.
Read More: PrivatBank sues Discount Bank, Kolomoisky for alleged $600-million fraud in Israel
PrivatBank filed a claim in the Tel Aviv District Court to in an attempt to recoup $600 million (Hr 16.5 billion) it alleges were illegally transferred from the bank, through shell companies, into the accounts of the Israeli Discount Bank.
The accounts are registered on St. John, an alleged shell company controlled by the oligarchs. According to PrivatBank, the money was transferred from PrivatBank using insider lending through its Cyprus branch between 2007 and 2011.
The Tel Aviv claim further accuses Kolomoisky and Boholyubov of fraud and embezzlement and also names Discount Bank as a defendant in the complaint, accusing it of aiding the alleged scheme.
The case was stalled for nearly two years, due to the defendants allegedly dodging the complaints.
In April, the Israeli court allowed PrivatBank to serve Kolomoisky and his associates the complaint in Ukraine in accordance with the Hague Convention that allows documents issued in one signatory state to be legally certified in all others.
PrivatBank is suing Kolomoisky in Israel, Ukraine, the U.K, and the U.S.
