VTB says may make Poroshenko compensate unit takeover in court

MOSCOW, Nov 27 (PRIME) -- Russia’s second largest lender VTB does not rule out collecting the funds it spent to buy the bank, which became its Ukrainian affiliate, from Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko in court because of the government’s attempts to take it over, VTB said in a statement on Tuesday.

“We would also like to remind Mr. Poroshenko that VTB (Ukraine) was created on the basis of Bank Mriya which he owned and which group VTB bought from him in 2006. Group VTB reserves the right to apply to an international court to charge Mr. Poroshenko the sum spent on the purchase of the bank,” VTB said.

The bank said that the Ukrainian courts dragged their feet on consideration of Russian bank VTB’s claims against arrest of its assets and shares, and their decisions are an attempt to take over the assets. “Political bias of the Ukrainian courts makes their future decisions in our case predictable.”

In March 2017, Kiev introduced sanctions against all subsidiaries of Russian banks – Ukrainian units of Sberbank and VTB Bank, VS Bank of Sberbank, BM Bank of VTB, and VEB.RF’s unit Prominvestbank, prohibiting all financial operations in favor of affiliated parties, including parent banks.

In September 2018, the Court of Appeal of Kiev arrested shares of local affiliates of VEB.RF, Sberbank and VTB Bank under several cases of companies owned by Igor Kolomoisky. The decision was made in the framework of fulfillment of an earlier ruling by the arbitration court in The Hague to order Russia to compensate for losses arising from separation of Crimea from Ukraine.

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