The UK Supreme Court has refused permission for former “PrivatBank” owners — Ihor Kolomoiskyi and Hennadiy Boholyubov — to appeal an English court ruling that ordered them to pay the bank more than $3 billion in damages, interest, and legal costs.
This is reported by the press service of “PrivatBank”.
In July 2025, the Supreme Court found that they had committed a large-scale fraud against the bank. The former owners appealed to the Court of Appeal and asked to overturn the decision, in particular on the grounds that they had allegedly returned misappropriated funds to the bank.
On May 22, 2026, the Court of Appeal dismissed these appeals, at which point the plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court. The current decision means that the appeal process is complete. The courtʼs decision of July 2025 can now be enforced in any jurisdiction.
Nationalization of “PrivatBank” and the court
In 2016, the National Bank, under the leadership of Valeria Hontareva, began to reform the banking market and, among other things, analyzed the capital of banks using a methodology it developed with IMF.
The National Bank found a “black hole” in the “PrivatBank” capital — it arose because 97% of the “PrivatBank” loans were issued to “related parties”, most of which were companies without assets and cash flows. Valeria Hontareva spent a long time convincing shareholders to “put” real assets into the bank, and the shareholders fought a positional battle with her.
In December 2016, the National Bank of Ukraine declared “PrivatBank” bankrupt and proposed to the Cabinet of Ministers to nationalize it. On the same day, the National Security and Defense Council, headed by Petro Poroshenko, proposed to the government to recapitalize the bank from the budget, and to the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) and the National Bank to monitor the stability of the financial system.
Poroshenko put the National Security and Defense Council’s decision into effect by presidential decree. After that, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to nationalize “PrivatBank”.
DGF was responsible for the nationalization, it appointed a temporary board of “PrivatBank”. After that, it carried out a bail-in — it forcibly converted money in the accounts of “related persons” into shares of the bank’s capital.
Under Ukrainian law, “related persons” declare their relationship themselves, or NBU establishes this relationship. In this case, the relationship was established by the Department for Monitoring Persons Related to Banks, which Valeria Hontareva created in June 2015. Five days before the nationalization, a special commission of NBU issued Resolution No. 105, which listed 1 092 such “related persons”.
DGF conducted a bail-in and then sold 100% of the “PrivatBank” capital to the Ministry of Finance for 1 hryvnia. After that, the Ministry of Finance recapitalized “PrivatBank” by $5.8 billion.
Then, the state-owned “PrivatBank” sued its former shareholders — Ihor Kolomoiskyi and Hennadiy Boholyubov — for fraud and demanded compensation for $1.9 billion in losses with interest.
In July, the Supreme Court of London ruled in favor of “PrivatBank” and its shareholder, the government of Ukraine.
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