The Cyprus District Court of Nicosia, under a suit of Investohills Vesta Financial Company, prohibited any operations with the assets or property of Kagerol Holdings Limited registered in Cyprus and owned by the citizen of the Russian Federation Ashot Malkhasyan, which owns the Gorky Balaklava Mine named.

According to a press release from the financial company, until the end of 2014, Kagerol Holdings Limited was part of the Smart Holding of Ukrainian businessman and MP Vadim Novinsky and controlled PJSC Balaklava Mine, which is now in the occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

This allowed the debtor to avoid fulfilling his obligations for a long time. Involvement of international mechanisms for freezing the debtor's assets will make the debt collection or negotiated settlement procedure more efficient.

At the same time, Investohills Vesta in February 2019 acquired a pool of assets of the bankrupt Bank Forum from the Deposit Guarantee Fund, among which there are debts of enterprises of the former shareholder of the bank Vadim Novinsky.

Thus, Investohills Vesta became the legal successor of the right to claim for loans of PJSC Balaklava Mine with decisions of the Ukrainian courts confirmed that the debt amounts UAH 440 million.

In turn, the founder and managing partner of the financial company, Andriy Volkov, in an interview with km.ru, said that the company returned UAH 2 billion to the state in two years, as of the end of 2020. This money was received not only by the state, but also by bank depositors – through the Deposit Guarantee Fund, he said.

At the same time, the financial company was engaged in blocking problem assets in the territories of Donbas and Crimea.

"The largest case in this direction remains the Balaklava Mine in Sevastopol. In 2019, Investohills Vesta bought out the assets of the bankrupt Forum bank, including the debts of the companies of its former shareholder Vadim Novinsky. This is about UAH 440 million. At least, this amount was confirmed by the national courts. As the legal successor of the right to claim for the loans of the mining company, we secured the blocking of the assets of Kagerol Holdings Limited in the Cyprus court," Volkov said, adding that this company belongs to Novinsky's brother and controls the mine, which was re-registered in accordance with Russian law.

Referring to the situation with the return of debts of other banks, in particular those belonging to Kostiantyn Zhevaho, the managing partner said that "this is a very voluminous case, which is complicated by attempts to evade payment of debts through various schemes."

"One of them is the delay in bankruptcy proceedings. For example, in the case of Rosava tire maker, the case has been dragging on since 2018. It was around this time, a year ago, when Investohills Vesta acquired the rights to claim UAH 2.7 billion of loans issued to Rosava, and over UAH 13 billion, which were issued to other companies related to Zhevaho. In these transactions, Rosava was a surety. However, the Kyiv regional economic court sided with the debtor and refused our claims. The case is being dragged out by additional claims filed by firms from the Zhevaho pool. With one of these – Premiori – we have reached the Supreme Court. Now it is problematic to predict when and how the proceedings will end, but we consistently stand our ground and use all the tools available to us," Volkov said.

The main assets of Smart Holding in Crimea were the Gorky Balaklava Mine (Sevastopol), the Yevpatoria and Saki Building Materials Plants, which were part of Smart-Nerudprom.