Court rules nationalization of PrivatBank illegal, NBU appeals
The Kyiv District Administrative Court has ruled that the nationalization of PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest bank, was illegal on April 18.
Censor.NET reports citing Interfax.
In December 2016, amid rumors of massive insider lending, the Ukrainian government nationalized PrivatBank, whose assets amounted to 20 percent of the country’s banking sector. It subsequently found a hole $5.5 billion in the bank’s ledger.
The bank’s new management has attempted to sue its former owners, oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholyubov, in the United Kingdom to recover billions of dollars they allege were embezzled from the bank.
In November 2018, a London High Court judge ruled that the English legal system did not have jurisdiction in the case, potentially ending a global freeze on the oligarchs’ assets.
At the time of the Kyiv District Administrative Court’s ruling, PrivatBank was in the process of appealing the London verdict.
Kolomoiskyi and Boholyubov have also faced asset freezes in Ukraine. On March 29, a Kyiv court placed yet another arrest on assets belonging to their informal Privat business group. Privat stands accused in a longstanding case of embezzling nearly $700 million in refinancing loans provided by the National Bank of Ukraine to PrivatBank in the ten years before its nationalization.
Some experts have suggested those assets could potentially be confiscated to compensate the Ukrainian state for the recapitalization of PrivatBank.
