For the second month, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Irina Venediktova, has blocked the delivery of suspicions in the case of the withdrawal of money from Privatbank by its former owners. This was enough for the lawyers of Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov to go on the offensive and start suing the United States, accusing them of expropriating Ukrainian citizens’ investments in American commercial real estate.
The basis of the claim is the absence of any charges brought against Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov in Ukraine.
Almost literally: “The basis for all charges brought against the United States without exception are possible offenses that occurred in Ukraine at a Ukrainian bank, at the direction of two Ukrainian citizens. However, to date, the prosecutor’s office of Ukraine has not brought any criminal charges against Kolomoisky or Bogolyubov, and no criminal cases have been initiated against Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov in Ukraine.”
Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov intend to prove in the International Center for the Settlement of Disputes (ICSID) that the States violated the provisions of the Treaty between the United States and Ukraine on the mutual protection of investments. They accuse the United States of violating international law and harming investors.
There are important references in the documents submitted by Kolomoisky’s lawyers to international arbitration: in fact, they accuse the US Department of Justice of trying to substitute itself for the justice system in Ukraine, where so far “no charges have been brought against the crimes of which they are accused in the United States , and not a single Ukrainian court has determined that these crimes took place at all.”
Can not argue with that. Four years after nationalization, despite dozens of boxes with case materials in the GPU, it still has not come close to at least some logical conclusion.
