Kolomoisky, Boholiubov value their assets at over $8 bln – London court
Former owners of PrivatBank Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov, as part of the disclosure of information about their assets in the lawsuit initiated against them in the London court by the nationalized bank, estimated their value at over $8 billion, according to the published decision of Judge William Trower.
"On the basis of their own freezing order asset disclosure, they both own interests in a large number of the same assets, where the size of their holdings taken together (valued by them at the time of their asset disclosure in aggregate at more than US $8 billion) are either the same or very similar – in other words held 50/50," the document reads.
As reported, after considering PrivatBank's claim, the London court issued a worldwide asset freeze order on December 19, 2017, totaling over $2.5 billion. Kolomoisky later stated in an interview with the KishkiNa channel that the freeze applied to all of his assets.
The judge also noted in the ruling that many of these assets enable Kolomoisky and Boholiubov to own controlling stakes in the company or business underlying them. According to the judge, joint ownership of other assets is also evidenced by the fact that the former owners of PrivatBank both filed asset declarations in these proceedings, in which they indicated 201 offshore holding companies in which each of them had equivalent shares, and through which each of them thus had indirect shares in the underlying assets of approximately the same value.
According to the ruling, there was some documentary evidence that Kolomoisky and Boholiubov may have separated since 2007, but this was contained in the testimony of Boholiubov, a witness provided in court, on which PrivatBank was unable to cross-examine him. Therefore, the judge was unable to conclude that the witness's words fully reflected the true situation, especially since the former owners themselves refused to testify and be present during cross-examination regarding the witness's testimony.
The ruling recalls that Kolomoisky and Boholiubov are well-known Ukrainian businessmen who had interests in a wide range of different enterprises, including not only the banking sector, but also ferroalloys, media, oil and gas trading, and real estate. They are about the same age, and both are or were citizens of Ukraine, Israel, and Cyprus; Boholiubov also has British citizenship.
"They have been close friends and business partners since the early 1990s and since then have worked together on what Mr Bogolyubov in other proceedings called 'many projects and investments," the judge said.
He recalled that Kolomoisky lived in Ukraine until 2003, when he began spending most of his time in France, Israel and Switzerland, becoming a Swiss resident in Geneva in 2010. He then headed Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration in 2014, after being dismissed from that position in early 2015, he said, living in Geneva and Israel, and returning to Ukraine in 2019, where he remained at the time of the trial, although he was later stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship.
According to the decision, Boholiubov considered himself more internationally oriented, left Ukraine in 2007 and moved to London in 2009, where he remained until 2017, when he moved to Geneva. "His position was that since the time he left Ukraine in 2007 he and Mr Kolomoisky had tended towards their own individual projects. Like Mr Kolomoisky he moved back to Ukraine in 2019," judge Trower said.
He concluded that while it is entirely possible that there was a change in the exact nature of the relationship between the former owners of PrivatBank, they continued to act in concert with each other during the period relevant to the proceedings.
However, the judge agreed that Kolomoisky was "everywhere" with his management approaches, as employees of the Privat Business Center put it in one of the Skype conversations, although the same cannot be said for Boholiubov. "Nonetheless, I do not agree that he was not a details man," Trower added of Boholiubov.
He also said the former owners of PrivatBank were also close on a more personal level: in early 2017 they shared office space in Geneva and both had houses in Nikolskoye, as evidenced by the nature of some of the WhatsApp messages and other communications that have survived. In addition, it is stated in decision, Kolomoisky and Boholiubov communicated closely about the steps they could take to prevent PrivatBank from filing a lawsuit against them. At the same time, Kolomoisky received information about this from employees of the already nationalized bank.
The judge also mentioned that another important aspect of the relationship between the former owners of PrivatBank was the way they communicated with each other: Kolomoisky constantly claimed that he did not use email, considering it unsafe and unreliable, and the electronic means by which he was accustomed to communicate with others, including Boholiubov, were WhatsApp, Viber and Black – a secure telephone network through which several dozen people who appeared in evidence at the trial could communicate with each other by calling the numbers listed under their names in the directory. The first three numbers in the January 2013 version of the Black directory were the work numbers in Dnipro for Kolomoisky (0101), Boholiubov (0102) and Chairman of the Board Oleksandr Dubilet (0103).
As reported, according to the ruling announced on July 30, 2025, Kolomoisky and Boholiubov are jointly and severally liable to the bank for compensation for the damage caused to it. This amount should be determined in the amount of $1.912 billion minus the real value of the assets transferred to the bank, as specified in the text of the decision. As noted by PrivatBank lawyers, with regard to the transferred assets, the court established the need to take into account their real value of approximately $140 million, while the defendants' estimates (approximately $640 million) should not be taken into account.
As for interest, Judge Trower ruled that this issue should be resolved at the next hearing.
"The amount of payment that the former owners will be obliged to make will be determined at the next hearing in October 2025. It is expected that the amount compensated to the bank will exceed $2 billion, including interest and legal costs," the Ministry of Finance said. PrivatBank and the National Bank agree with this assessment.
PrivatBank is the largest state-owned bank in Ukraine: its total assets as of April 1, 2025 amounted to UAH 945.5 billion ($22.6 billion at the current exchange rate), or 25.2% of the entire banking system. Today, the bank serves more than 18 million active clients, and in general, 70% of Ukrainians use its services.
Nationalized in December 2016, PrivatBank filed a lawsuit in the High Court of London a year ago against Kolomoisky and Boholiubov, as well as six British companies allegedly related to them. In turn, the defense of the former owners rejected the accusations and argued that the bank failed to identify specific actions of the former owners that were illegal under Ukrainian law or that directly led to losses of the bank. Kolomoisky has already announced plans to appeal the court's decision.
The final hearings at the High Court in London began in the middle of June 2023, partly because the judge postponed them due to the war in Ukraine. The bank said that by this time the amount of the claim had increased from the initial $1.9 billion to almost $4.5 billion, as interest is accrued at the rate of approximately $500,000 per day, and the court order on the worldwide seizure of the defendants' assets remains in force. PrivatBank said that at the time of nationalization it was undercapitalized by about $5.5 billion and was subsequently recapitalized by the government.