The ex-owners of the “Trust” and their wives will owe the bank for life

Source The bank’s total claims reach $900 million, but it expects at least $300million. Trust Bank recovered non-core assets from its former owners Ilya Yurov, Sergey Belyaev and Nikolay Fetisov only 9 billion rubles. (about $ 142.4 million) two years after he won a lawsuit against them. Alexander Sokolov spoke about this in an interview with Vedomosti.

In January 2020, the High Court of London satisfied the Trust’s claim against the former owners and their wives – they must pay $ 900 million to the bank. The court decided that all three bankers were involved in a fraudulent scheme and were responsible for the collapse of the bank in December 2014. The Central Bank then allocated 127 billion rubles for the rehabilitation of the Trust.

The Trust planned to recover at least the amount of the seized assets, as well as everything that would be additionally identified as part of the recovery procedure. But the assets of the defendants, both Yurov himself and Trust in 2020, were estimated at only $60 million. In 2021, Sokolov told Vedomosti that he plans to receive $300 million.

The rest of the bankers’ seized property is awaiting its turn for recovery. But the process of returning funds is not going quickly, Sokolov noted: the economic situation abroad is also difficult and inflation is high, so there are not so many people who want to buy assets.

The bank filed a lawsuit against the former owners back in 2016 and demanded the return of $ 830 million, arguing that this is the amount they should compensate for non-performing loans issued to offshore companies controlled by them. At the same time, the London High Court froze the assets of Yurov, Belyaev, Fetisov and their wives, including real estate in the UK, Russia and Cyprus, as well as bank accounts in these countries and Switzerland.

Probability that the Bank “Trust” will recover the full amount of the decision, very low, says Dmitry Chernenko, partner of the A1 Bar Association. The defendants are unlikely to have assets for such an amount, he believes. In addition, most of them have been restructured and it will be difficult to recover them. The bank will return as much as it finds, Chernenko notes: usually it is from tens to a couple of hundred million dollars.

If the debtors do not have enough funds or assets to pay the claim, then no interim measures, coercion and even bankruptcy will not help to repay the debts in full, Yury Fedyukin, managing partner of the law firm Enterprise Legal Solutions, agrees: part of the debt will simply be written off.

The terms of return strongly depend on the jurisdiction, says Chernenko: in England, recovering assets will be quite easy and fast, but in jurisdictions such as Switzerland, France, Italy, processes can drag on for years. In addition, all opponents can use sanctions rhetoric in their favor and further delay the procedure, he adds.