The High Court of England and Wales froze over $300 million worth of assets belonging to Ukrainian-Russian oligarch Kostyantyn Grygoryshyn worldwide, Liga.net reported on Dec. 21 citing a judgment it had obtained.
A judge in London ordered that the assets of Grygoryshyn’s Energy Standard Group be frozen as a provisional measure amid a legal dispute over machine building enterprise Sumy NPO in eastern Ukraine.
Grygoryshyn lost a corporate dispute to the co-owners of Sumy NPO, member of Ukrainian parliament Vadym Novynskyi and Russian businessman Vladimir Lukianenko Jr.
In May 2016, London Commercial Court obliged Energy Standard to pay $305.8 million to Novynskyi and Lukianenko Jr. for the violation of joint venture agreement. In 2011-2013 millions of dollars were siphoned off from Sumy NPO to Grygoryshyn’s companies Energy Standard and Technoimport, causing profit losses to other shareholders.
In October 2017, the High Court in London refused to overturn the decision. But Lukianenko and Novynskyi suspected that their partner might try to avoid paying the compensation and convinced the court to impose the worldwide freezing order on Energy Standard’s companies.
Liga.net wrote that the judgement mentioned the Ukrainian assets of Grygoryshyn such as Zaporozhtransformator, Turboatom, Sumy NPO, Ukrrechflot, Zaporizhzhya Cable Plant, and Svarog Asset Management. Grygoryshyn also controls majority stakes of seven Ukrainian regional electricity distribution companies (oblenergo).
Judgements of foreign courts, however, don’t come into force in Ukraine without recognition and enforcement from a Ukrainian court, partner at CMS Cameron McKenna law firm Vitaly Radchenko told Liga.net. UK and Ukraine don’t have a bilateral treaty on mutual enforcement of foreign judgements.
Sumy NPO, a major manufacturer of equipment for energy and mining industries, was privatized in 1990s and has a complex corporate rights structure. 83.7 percent of its shares belong to a Cyprus-registered Stremvol Holdings Limited. The ownership over Stremvol is divided between Grygoryshyn, Novynskyi, and Lukianenko Jr., a son of former director of the plant.
On Dec. 19 the High Court in London also froze $2.5 billion in assets belonging to oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov over fraud related to the nationalization of PrivatBank.
Additional reporting by the Kyiv Post staff writer Josh Kovensky
