Alex Rovt, a Ukrainian-American businessman, has filed a lawsuit to the U.S. district court accusing Ukrainian lawmaker and journalist Oleksandr Dubinsky of libel. Along with Dubinsky, Rovt is suing the 1+1 TV channel, owned by billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, which aired the lawmaker’s allegedly defamatory statements.
The U.S. court accepted the claim on Feb. 25. However, it took nearly a month for the court to summon the defendants.
On March 19, Hennadiy Moskal, the former governor of Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast and now a lawyer for Rovt, published a photo of the subpoena. According to Moskal, the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice has to deliver this subpoena to Kolomoisky too, as he is the owner of 1+1.
Speaking to the Kyiv Post on March 24, Kolomoisky said he had not yet received the document. On March 23, Dubinsky told Ukrainian media outlet The Babel that he knows nothing about accusations by Rovt.
If Kolomoisky and Dubinsky do not respond to the court within 21 days of receiving subpoenas, the court will automatically take the Rovt’s side.
The ‘libel’
On Feb. 3, on his TV show “Dubinisms,” Dubinsky accused Rovt of sending his representatives to Dmytro Sennychenko, the head of Ukraine’s State Property Fund, in order to offer him a $5-million bribe.
In part, Dubinsky was citing findings of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), made public on Jan. 29. NABU then reported that it had arrested three men for allegedly attempting to bribe Sennychenko so that he would appoint a certain person as a director of the Odesa Port Plant.
However, NABU did not reveal the names of those arrested. It also didn’t name the person who sent them to Sennychenko.
According to Dubinsky, Rovt was behind the attempted bribery. However, the lawmaker and journalist did not provide his audience with evidence to back up his claim.
“There are interesting rumors about who offered this huge bribe for the appointment of the Odesa Port Plant’s director,” Dubinsky says in his TV show.
“This person might be a Ukrainian businessman with a U.S. passport, Alex Rovt,” Dubinsky continues.
In Ukraine, Dubinsky is known as a journalist with little credibility. It is widely believed that he is a member of the “Kolomoisky lobby” within the country’s parliament.
Rovt v. Kolomoisky
Rovt and Kolomoisky are business rivals. Their companies have been competing for influence over the Odesa Port Plant for years.
At the time of Dubinsky’s accusation against Rovt, the American businessman’s IBE Trade Corporation was competing with Kolomoisky’s Ukrnaftoburinnya company over a contract on gas supplies for the Odesa Port Plant.
On March 5, the news broke that Kolomoisky’s company had won the tender. However, a few days later, the management of the Odesa Port Plant had to overturn the bidding results after the plant’s supervisory board found that Ukrnaftoburinnya had abused the tender by offering overpriced gas supply services.
Rovt believes that Dubinsky’s accusations of bribery damaged his reputation and caused economic harm to him, as his company lost the tender. He is demanding compensation — the court will determine how much, should he win the case — and apologies from Dubinsky and 1+1.
According to Rovt’s lawyer Moskal, he has also asked the court to take into consideration another proceeding opened against Kolomoisky in the U.S.
Delaware case
In Delaware, Kolomoisky is being sued by the business he used to own, PrivatBank.
In 2016, the state nationalized and recapitalized PrivatBank with taxpayer money. The government alleges that Kolomoisky and his aides laundered $5.5 billion from the bank and concealed the money in shell companies overseas. Since then, Ukraine has been seeking to retrieve the stolen money in courts in several countries, including the U.S.
The bank filed a civil complaint in the U.S. Chancery Court of Delaware, accusing Kolomoisky and his associates of conducting $470 billion worth of money laundering transactions through Cyprus over the course of a decade.
PrivatBank alleges that millions of dollars in laundered money were parked in assets and enterprises across a dozen U.S. states, including real estate and metallurgical companies.
The U.S. case has reportedly triggered an FBI investigation into Kolomoisky and his alleged accomplices.
