Key facts
- The U.K. Supreme Court refused the former owners permission to appeal, PrivatBank said in a November 4 statement.
- A London court ordered Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholyubov to pay more than $3 billion in damages and costs.
- PrivatBank was nationalized in 2016 after the central bank found a $5.5 billion hole from fraudulent lending.
- $2.5 billion in assets belonging to the two former owners were frozen worldwide as part of the case.
- The bank said the ruling lets it continue enforcement and recovery of the judgement in jurisdictions worldwide.
The U.K. Supreme Court refused PrivatBank's former owners permission to appeal a $3 billion fraud judgement, the state-owned Ukrainian bank said in a statement published on November 4, 2026. The decision ends the appeals process and lets the bank pursue enforcement and recovery of the judgement in jurisdictions around the world.
PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest bank, was nationalized in 2016 after Ukraine's central bank found a $5.5 billion hole in its ledger due to fraudulent lending. The bank launched proceedings the following year against its former owners, Ukrainian oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholyubov, to recover the money.
A London court found the two liable for fraud in July 2025 and later, in November, ordered them to pay more than $3 billion in damages and costs. They failed to pay by the court-imposed deadline and challenged the ruling, which was upheld in May 2026.
"PrivatBank is delighted that the Supreme Court has dismissed the defendants' applications so quickly, bringing an end to the appeals process, and enabling PrivatBank to continue with its enforcement process," the bank said in its statement.
As part of the proceedings, $2.5 billion in assets belonging to Kolomoisky and Boholyubov were frozen worldwide. A person close to the case told the Kyiv Independent in 2025 that those frozen assets would be the key focus of PrivatBank's recovery strategy, although the bank's plan is secret. The person said that while the location and content of the assets are well known, recovering them will be a similarly difficult and lengthy process.
The case has been widely seen as a test of Ukraine's post-EuroMaidan Revolution reforms and its efforts to dismantle an oligarch system in which powerful business figures wielded outsized influence.