A Singapore court has slashed the damages Swiss USB had to pay to Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili by USD 282 million. The damages USB will now have to pay Ivanishvili, have therefore gone down from $743 million to $461 million, Bloomberg reports.
A few days before the Georgian parliamentary elections, Ivanishvili gave an interview to pro-government Imedi TV in which he cited his long-running legal trials with Credit Suisse over access to his funds as evidence that he is “de-facto” sanctioned. In the interview, he explained that he had refused to meet with U.S. officials, including the US Ambassador to Georgia because of “personal complexes” that his financial troubles produced, citing that knowing his financial restrictions, he would be more concerned with regaining his money than focusing on the interests of the state.
“When we won the court case in Singapore and Credit Suisse could no longer prevent the implementation and it was over, I immediately called the American ambassador the week before, communicated, and asked for a meeting,” Ivanishvili said, noting that the meeting would take place after the October 26 elections.
