Supreme Court Reversed Judgments of First and Appeal Instance Courts on Collection of Monetary Funds from Joint-Stock Company Commercial Bank 'PrivatBank' in Favour of Surkis Family

The Supreme Court has completed the consideration of case No. 826/20221/16 upon the claim of I. Surkis, H. Surkis, R. Surkis, S. Surkis, M. Surkis and P. Kovalyk to the National Bank of Ukraine, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, the Deposit Guarantee Fund, the Fund’s representatives authorized to perform provisional administration in the Joint-Stock Company Commercial Bank 'PrivatBank', the Joint-Stock Company Commercial Bank 'PrivatBank' and the Public Joint-Stock Company “Ukrgasbank”.

While the financial recovery of the PrivatBank, the deposits of persons linked with the bank had been the subject to obligatory change into the bank’s shares, which were purchased by the state for 1 UAH from the shareholders.

In this case the plaintiffs argued that they had not been linked persons and had been unlawfully deprived of their deposits. They requested to cancel a number of decisions of the NBU, the DGF and, in the reversal of execution of these decisions, asked to collect monetary funds from the PrivatBank at the rate of their deposits with interest.

Courts of first and appeal instances have granted the plaintiffs’ claims completely.

The dispute has been transferred for its consideration by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court with regard to the appellant’s reference to the violation of jurisdiction rules committed by courts of previous instances.

The SC GC reversed these judgments and closed the proceedings in the case.

The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court concluded that the claim in this case had been submitted to protect proprietary rights to a deposit; the plaintiffs considered these rights to have been violated because of acknowledging them as linked persons. Such a dispute, according to its subject matter, should be considered by courts of civil jurisdiction.