The Georgian legal company MKD Law, based on the request of its client, filed two lawsuits against the National Bank of Georgia of Georgia (NBG) and "Liberty Bank", which are related to the NBG's possible flawed implementation of the sanctions imposed by the USA.
As the leading lawyer of the case and partner of MKD Law, Sandro Samadbegishvili, explained to BMG, MKD Law represents Metalloinvest in these cases, which is a Swiss company sanctioned by the United States of America. The company has placed several million EUR in "Liberty Bank".
Metalloinvest, in turn, is a subsidiary of the Russian investment holding, USM, which 49%-share is owned by Alisher Usmanov, a Russian billionaire of Uzbek origin. Usmanov with Russian citizenship is one of the richest people, whose fortune is estimated by the American Forbes at USD 14.5 billion.
"The Swiss company Metalloinvest, which is sanctioned by the United States of America, has placed the funds in Liberty Bank in Georgia. Our client had these funds for a long time, but in April, he was completely restricted from accessing his own assets. The amount is quite large - we are talking about several million Euros", said the lawyer while talking to BMG.
According to Sandro Samadbegishvili, the legal basis of the case is noteworthy, as decisions of the National Bank and "Liberty Bank" were based on an insufficient normative basis.
As of Sandro Samadbegishvili, at the time when "Liberty Bank" froze the assets of Metalloinvest under the protection of MKD Law, the statutory document was not published.
"Liberty Bank told us that they received a written instruction from the National Bank by e-mail, but they did not provide us with this document - neither did the National Bank. In the meantime, a one-and-a-half-page order was adopted by the National Bank in August, which reads that commercial banks are obliged to comply with the sanctions of the USA, the European Union and the United Kingdom", explains lawyer Sandro Samadbegishvili while talking to BMG.
As lawyer Sandro Samadbegishvili mentions in an interview with BMG, the company does not put the sanction imposed by the Western states under the question mark and they believe that this regime should be protected both in Georgia and in other countries.
A detail that came to the attention of MKD Law is the correctness of introducing the enforcement mechanism of Western sanctions in Georgia. According to the legal company's assessment, the sanctions enforcement mechanism in Georgia weakens this process.
"We, as lawyers, consider that the way it is introduced into the Georgian legal space degrades and weakens the use of sanctions in Georgia. We have no law, organic law, or even a court decision that says this sanction must be enforced against this person.
One function that our lawsuit can have is a remedial function because we believe that this is a flawed implementation and there should be a way to fix it",- says Sandro Samadbegishvili in an interview with BMG.
According to Sandro Samadbegishvili, a partner of MKD, the Georgian commercial bank imposed more restrictions on the company than the American sanction requires, and the reason for this, in his opinion, is the vagueness of the legislation.
The said dispute, in which MKD Law represents the plaintiff party - Metalloinvest, a company owned by billionaire Alisher Usmanov's UMS, has recently started. As the leading lawyer of the case, Sandro Samadbegishvili, says, the dispute will probably last for several years.
Metalloinvest is a mining and metallurgical production giant with assets exceeding several billion dollars. The company owns the Mikhailov and Gorki mining and processing plants, which are the largest steel plants in Russia and the CIS.
