On Tuesday 3 June 2025, Charles Hollander KC, sitting as a Deputy Judge of the Commercial Court, handed down judgment in favour of the English administrators of VTB Capital, dismissing the claimants’ claims for damages in excess of US$800 million (Gerasimenko v. VTB Capital Plc [2025] EWHC 1333 (Comm)).
The claimants were the former owners of the large and strategically important “Red October” Steelworks in Volgograd. They claimed that their interest in the works had been wrongfully expropriated at the behest of the Russian state and that a number of other defendants were involved in the conspiracy. It was claimed that JSC VTB Bank, one of Russia’s major banks, was one of the conspirators and, in particular, that it was involved in the concoction of allegedly false criminal charges against the first claimant, Dimitry Gerasimenko, a dual Russian and Ukrainian national. VTB Capital, a London based investment bank and subsidiary of VTB Bank, was also said to have acted as a co-conspirator and was sued as the “anchor defendant” to establish the jurisdiction of the English courts over the claimants’ wider fraud claims.
The court held that the claimant’s claims against VTB Capital had no real prospect of succeeding at trial and therefore that there was no basis to serve the other defendants out of the jurisdiction, thus bringing the entire litigation to an end on a summary basis. This required the court to consider both the claimants’ original pleaded case and a series of amendments which had been brought forward in response to the summary judgment application in which it was alleged that false statements had been made on behalf of VTB Capital to the Russian criminal authorities.
The decision is notable in illustrating the circumstances in which the court will grant summary judgment on the merits in a major case governed by foreign law. The claimants’ claims were governed by Russian law, and they relied on an expert report from a well-known Russian law expert. The administrators accepted, for the purposes of the summary judgment application only, that Russian law was as alleged by the claimants but contended that, even on that basis, the claims had no real prospect of success on the facts and the court was willing to grant summary judgment without the need to resolve any disputed points of foreign law.
A copy of the judgment can be found here.
The administrators were represented by David Davies KC, leading Adam Al-Attar KC of South Square Chambers. They were instructed by a team from Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP lead by Mark Lawford and Christopher Marks.
