Stockholm arbitration court rejects Kolomoisky's $6 billion lawsuit against Ukrainian government
Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce rejected a $6 billion lawsuit of minority shareholders of the Ukrainian oil and gas company, Ukrnafta, controlled by Igor Kolomoisky’s Privat group, against the Ukrainian government.
"Mr. Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov wanted to recover from Ukraine more than $6 billion U.S. dollars and filed a lawsuit in the Stockholm arbitration. After almost six years of litigation, today, arbitration denied the claim. It was rejected in its entirety," wrote the Ukrainian Minister of Justice Denys Maliuska on Facebook.
According to the sources, the plaintiffs' claims were rejected in full due to the lack of jurisdiction of the Stockholm arbitration to consider the case.
The Minister added that all three plaintiffs are shareholders of Ukranfta and own 40.1009% of the company shares.
"The plaintiffs demanded, to put it mildly, a lot from the state: more than 66 billion U.S. dollars and interest accrued for this amount. To better explain the scale of the demands: offshore companies tried to recover from the government the amount that exceeds all the expenditures of the state for education and science in 2021, or makes up about half of the state's expenses for pension payments," explained Maliuska.
In January 2015, three Cyprus-based minority shareholders of Ukrnafta, Littop Enterprises, Bridgemont Ventures, Bordo Management, sent a letter to the Minister of Energy, Volodymyr Demchyshyn, demanding from the Ukrainian government $5 billion dollars in compensation for the actions of the government and Naftogaz. In this document, Cypriot companies pointed out that,during 2006-2014, Ukrainian government prevented Ukrnafta from selling gas surplus freely on the market, despite the relevant decisions of the courts.
The minority shareholders offered representatives of Ukraine to contact them to resolve the dispute peacefully, giving a three month time frame. Otherwise, they intended to appeal to international arbitration, based on the norms of the Energy Community Treaty. The Ukrainian government owns 50% plus one share of Ukrnafta. The company is managed by the state-owned concern Naftogaz. But despite the majority of shares, the government has no actual control over it, as its management is loyal to Kolomoisky’s Privat Group. Littop Enterprises, Bridgemont Ventures, Bordo Managament own more than 40% of Ukrnafta's shares.