On Wednesday, Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum entrepreneur, denied lying about moving EN+ Group from Jersey to Russia to dodge U.S. sanctions in London’s High Court.
Since 2010, Rusal (RUAL.MM) founder Oleg Deripaska has been fighting former Russian finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin for a Moscow real estate joint venture.
Chernukhin, whose wife Lubov has contributed more than 2 million pounds ($2.5 million) to Britain’s ruling Conservative party and legislators since 2012, argues Deripaska is in contempt of court for allegedly enabling EN+ Group, which owns 57% of Rusal, to “redomicile” in 2019 in response to U.S. sanctions.
Contempt of court carries a two-year jail sentence and an unlimited fine.
Chernukhin’s attorneys claim Deripaska broke an agreement to maintain 45.5 million EN+ shares in Jersey to pay a $95 million obligation, which was paid in full.
On Tuesday, Chernukhin’s attorney Jonathan Crow called the shares “worthless” due to Deripaska’s debt enforcement issues in Russia.
Deripaska, who denies breaking the promise, claims EN+ shares would have been worthless without redomiciling because the firm would have gone bankrupt.
Deripaska testified via video link from Moscow and said there was “no way out” of reducing his EN+ stake below 50% and appointing independent directors to its board to ease U.S. sanctions.
He stated that Russian state-owned lender VTB, to which EN+ owed roughly $1 billion, required EN+ to transfer to Russia to approve the proposal.
On Tuesday, his lawyer Thomas Grant stated that British sanctions against Deripaska prohibited him from traveling to London.
Grant also suggested that U.S. sanctions violations may have led to Deripaska’s extradition from London.
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