INTEGRITES helped Turkish investors confront the raider attack

INTEGRITES team successfully protected interests of the Turkish investors by returning their 58% share in IK Aktiv LLC (Dnipro, Ukraine), and helped confront the raider attack on the company by a Ukrainian partner.

Turkish investors – participants in IK Aktiv, had been illegitimately excluded from the State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Formations. At the same time, as a result of illegitimate changes made to the Register, Ukrainian partner of Turkish investors Ruslan Yevstafyev had appointed himself as the director of the company.

To protect their property rights, Turkish investors filed a complaint with the State Registration Complaints Commission at the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine.

Thanks to the persuasive position of the INTEGRITES team, as well as the objectivity of the Ministry’s Commission, it became possible to prove that Turkish investors – Lutfü Turkkan, Mujakhit Turkkan and Ahmet Penich, had been illegally excluded from among the members of IK Aktiv.

The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkey to Ukraine Yağmur Ahmet Güldere, Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and its President Gennadiy Chizhikov, The Ukrainian-Turkish Business Council headed by its Chairman Rasim Bekmezji and the Union of Industrialists and Businessmen of Ukraine and Turkey (TUSIB) publicly spoke in defence of the Turkish entrepreneurs. The case has received widespread coverage in the Ukrainian media.

INTEGRITES team included Senior Associate Kristina Shyposha and Associate Marta Grunska from the cross-border litigation practice (supervised by Partner Dmytro Marchukov), as well as Senior Associate Serhii Rymar, from the domestic litigation practice (supervised by Partner Oleksandr Onishchenko).

“To solve the problem of raiding, which foreign investors have been still facing in Ukraine, the Government, legal and business communities should combine their efforts. The business climate and the volume of foreign investments coming to Ukraine both in the short term and long run will depend on how well-coordinated these efforts are”, INTEGRITES Partner, Dmytro Marchukov, commented.

INTEGRITES cross-border litigation team acts for international and Ukrainian clients in multijurisdictional disputes spanning across most of the countries where Ukrainian businesses have presence. The firm acts both as a lead counsel engaging and coordinating the local lawyers, accountants, insolvency practitioners and investigators abroad, and as a co-counsel on Ukrainian issues or Ukrainian law expert. Throughout 2018, the practice team has been involved in multimillion-dollar disputes in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Japan, Latvia, Canada, Panama, Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, Jersey, etc.

* IK Aktiv LLC is the owner of the property, on the basis of which the oil extraction plant in Kryvyi Rih operates. The plant is one of the leading players in the oil and fat market of Ukraine.