Ukrainian court upholds Belfast ruling on Quinns

A Ukrainian district court has upheld a Belfast court’s ruling that declared a chain of debt assignments worth $45 million over the shopping mall in Kiev formerly owned by the Quinn family “null and void”.

The judgment in Kiev on Wednesday recognised that the debt claim originated in Demesne Investments Ltd, where the bankrupt former billionaire Seán Quinn was director.

However, following a complicated chain of assignments, rights to the debt claim eventually fell into the hands of Elegant Invest, an obscure Ukrainian brokerage.

On March 13th, a Kiev high court upheld Elegant's right to collect $45 million from the Ukraina shopping mall, worth an estimated $75 million.

Lawyers representing Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, however, on March 26th secured a six-month postponement on the enforcement of the debt collection.

Yesterday's ruling found that the debt assignments through two intermediary companies – Innishmore Consultancy of Northern Ireland, run by Mr Quinn's nephew, and Lyndhurst Development Trading in offshore British Virgin Islands – were illegal.

The judgment bolstered the legal position of IBRC in Ukraine to have the commercial court reverse previous rulings in favour of Elegant Invest.

"The judgment opens the road to approve a legal application based on these new developments to review . . . the $45 million debt claim that was [previously] approved in favour of Lyndhurst and Elegant Invest," Rostyslav Levinzon, acting director of the shopping mall said. "We've reached the final stage in a long process of restoring the ownership rights of Ukraina shopping mall."

Since April 2011, IBRC had been stalled by numerous Ukrainian court battles to exercise its nearly 93 per cent stakeholder rights to assume control over the shopping centre’s estimated $10 million rent roll.

Wednesday's ruling came on the same day that IBRC announced in Moscow that it had formed a joint venture with Russia's Alfa Group's asset recovery arm to solidify control over more than $300 million worth of 11 properties that once belonged to the Quinn family business interests, including the Ukraina shopping centre.

Mr Quinn, his son and nephew have been found in contempt by the High Court partly for disrupting the State-owned bank's efforts to take over the Ukrainian property.

In November 2011, Mr Levinzon replaced Larysa Yanez Puga as the director general, or managing director, of Univermag. A payment of $500,000 to Ms Yanez Puga was behind the jailing of Seán Quinn jnr for civil contempt last year. She has failed to respond to numerous requests by The Irish Time s for comment.

Unknown minority shareholders in the mall had filed numerous court complaints challenging the bank’s appointment of Mr Levizon as mall director.