Former owners of Slavutych hotel in Kyiv complain of illegal deprival of ownership, want to address to ECHR

Kyiv, January 26 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The former owners of Kyiv-based European Slavutych hotel have claimed there was aviolation of Ukrainian law during the bankruptcy procedure and seizure of the hotel, and they are planning to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), they said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

"Even if everything was taken from us, [an appeal to the ECHR] in Strasbourg has been filed," a minority shareholder in the company, Mstyslav Skorobohatov, said, commenting on the illegal seizure of the hotel conducted on January 20, 2012.

The minority shareholder said that reports of his alleged involvement in the organization of the events linked to the seizure of the Slavutych hotel and on the opening of several criminal cases against him are groundless. He also said that he owns only a 1% stake in opened joint-stock company Slavutych Hotel, and not 49.9% as some sources had said.

Skorobohatov said that the initiators of the illegal seizure acted in the interests of the former vice speaker of the Russian State Duma, Alexander Babakov (now a lawmaker of the Russian State Duma, and a member of the international affairs committee and the United Russia faction).

Legal consultant Mykhailo Nehresha said at the press conference that the case of Slavutych hotel's bankruptcy initiated by Stalkon-M LLC and becoming the grounds for a claim on the seizure of the hotel's building from the Basis-Prom private enterprise was opened by Kyiv Economic Court and upheld by a court of appeals without the observation of Ukrainian law.

"The appeals in Higher Economic Court were heard in the same way," he said.

Nehresha also said that Kyiv Economic court had appointed Oleksiy Scherban the property manager of the hotel. Scherban is the owner of opened joint-stock company Slavutych Hotel, in whose favor the building was seized.

The co-owner of Basis-Prom, Abdullah Bani Nasser, also said that the company is planning to ask Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych for help in settling the conflict.

As reported, Abdullah Bani Nasser and Skorobohatov, the co-owners of the Dasko private enterprise, which indirectly owns the Rus hotel complex and 50% stakes in the Metropolis trade and entertainment center and Metrograd trade center (both located in Kyiv) in January 2009 appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHU) with an appeal against Ukraine on the violation of ownership rights during an illegal seizure of the above-mentioned facilities in November 2006. In their claim they assessed the loss from illegal actions at $250 million.

Then they linked the illegal seizure with VS Energy International, the beneficiaries of which are several Russian businessmen and Babakov.

VS Energy International Ukraine, which affiliated with VS Energy International, is a managing company of Premier International LLC, which unites hotels under the Premier Hotels brand (today the Premier Palace in Kyiv, the Oreanda in Yalta, the Dnister in Lviv, the Star (Mukacheve in Zakarpattia region) and the Cosmopolite in Kharkiv).