Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili has filed a complaint in Geneva to claim more than 200 million euros from Credit Suisse, a bank bought last year by UBS, as part of a spectacular dispute with twists and turns.
Honorary president of the ruling party in Georgia and considered the de facto leader of the country, the pro-Kremlin oligarch who has already obtained two victories against the bank in Bermuda and Singapore in the so-called “Lescaudron” affair – from name of a former star manager of the bank convicted of fraud – also seized the Civil Court of Geneva. Confirming information from the Bloomberg agency and the legal investigation site Gotham City, an anonymized document from the civil chamber of the Court of Justice consulted on Friday by AFP shows that the complaint was filed on January 10. It was considered “admissible” in a judgment dated April 18.
The document does not mention the name of the plaintiff but indicates his country of origin and the initial amount of the fortune entrusted to Credit Suisse in this dispute. A sum of “some $1.1 billion” had been entrusted to the Swiss bank as part of an “extremely complex” banking relationship during which “countless contractual and legal violations” were committed, according to the document.
The Georgian billionaire, who was Prime Minister in 2012-2013, is engaged in a long legal battle against a life insurance subsidiary of Credit Suisse which contacted him in 2004 to offer to manage his fortune – after he had sold, with a partner, a metallurgical complex in Russia for $1.6 billion – placed in a trust the following year. Bidzina Ivanishvili suffered losses in investments managed by Patrice Lescaudron, a former star banker at Credit Suisse, fired in 2015 then sentenced for fraud to five years in prison in 2018, and who committed suicide in 2020.
In 2022, a Bermuda court ruled in his favor, awarding him $600 million in damages. He criticized Credit Suisse for not having taken the necessary measures to prevent the fraudulent actions of its advisor. The case rebounded in May 2023 in Singapore, where a court ordered the bank to compensate him to the tune of an additional $742.7 million, reaffirming that Credit Suisse failed to “protect its assets”. Contacted by AFP, UBS did not comment.
