Court postpones consideration of claim on return of PrivatBank shares to Kolomoisky to April 25

The Economic Court of Kyiv has postponed the consideration of a claim, filed by the ex-owners of PrivatBank (Kyiv) Ihor Kolomoisky and Triantal Investments seeking to return the shares of the financial institution, to April 25, the bank's press service said on Thursday.

According to the report, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine will be involved in the hearing of the case.

On December 18, 2016, the government of Ukraine, referring to the proposal of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and former shareholders of PrivatBank, the largest of which at that time were Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov, decided to nationalize this largest financial institution on the Ukrainian market and injected over UAH 155 billion in it.

The ex-owners of the bank consider the nationalization, as a result of which they completely lost their shares, illegal, while PrivatBank and the state demand additional compensation from them.

At the end of February 2019, the Economic Court of Kyiv on the second attempt took into consideration the claim of Kolomoisky and Triantal, who owned 41.6572% and 16.5748% of PrivatBank, respectively, seeking to invalidate the sale and purchase agreement of this bank dated December 21, 2016.

On April 9, the court granted the plaintiffs' petition to expand the list of their claims with a clause on the return of PrivatBank shares to them and at the same time rejected the Ministry of Finance's petition, which asked to leave the claim without consideration. At the same time, the National Bank of Ukraine, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission of Ukraine, PrivatBank, as well as custodians of Ukreximbank and Solid Dnipro were added to the list of defendants.

On October 16, 2020, the judge of the Economic Court of Kyiv, Liudmyla Shkurdova, suspended the consideration of the claim of Kolomoisky and Triantal Investments seeking to return the shares to them pending the decision of the case, which is being considered in the court of administrative jurisdiction at the level of appeal on the legality of the bank's nationalization.

The Pivnichny (Northern) Economic Court of Appeal in December 2020 abolished the decision to suspend the consideration of the claim of Kolomoisky and Triantal Investments on the return of their shares.