Posted on July 12, 2012 - by Venik
Oleg Deripaska case: litigant ‘had criminal links’, court told
Michael Cherney, who claims he is owed $1.2bn, is challenged over supposed friendship with Russian oligarch
Michael Cherney, the businessman suing Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska for $1.2bn (£770m), is a criminal who regularly met with organised crime bosses and extorted millions of pounds in protection money, a courthas heard.
Deripaska, the influential oligarch who counts Lord Mandelson and Nat Rothschild among his friends, feared for his life and had no option but to pay the cash to Uzbekistan-born Cherney and create a pretence that they were close friends, the high court was told.
Cherney was also linked to guns and fake passports and accused of behaving as if he was in the Wild West. Thomas Beazley QC told the court: “Mr Cherney surrounded himself with criminal characters. They were his network, they were part of his modus operandi, and he used them to … put pressure on Mr Deripaska.”
Cherney, who now lives in Israel, claims Deripaska owes him $1.2bn because he was promised a 20% stake in the latter’s aluminium company, Rusal, and has produced a contract to the court.
But Beazley said: “We say that this document is a sham. It is one of the very few documents produced by Mr Cherney, but it is demonstrably not a genuine document.”
The court heard the pair seemed to have grown close – one of Cherney’s associates, Sergei Popov, was made godfather to Deripaska’s daughter – but that this was arranged to cover up the fact that Deripaska had to pay krysha (protection money).
On one occasion Cherney was arrested with his wife, Anna Tupikova, at Heathrow airport for attempting to enter the UK under false Polish passports. At the time, Cherney claimed he bought the passports in good faith from a man called Dimitri who he met at a beach bar in Miami, Florida, paying between $550 and $700 for each document.
He claimed he was told he could use a Polish passport because his grandfather was from Poland, the court heard.
Similar fake passports linked to Cherney and his associate Anton Malevsky were found in a car stopped in Switzerland in 1994. Also in the car were a Walther PPK gun and two silencers.
Beazley told the court: “It is a clear example of Mr Cherney and Mr Malevsky engaging in criminality and organised crime, and not consistent with being a proper but non-conventional businessman.”
The La Reserve hotel in Geneva, where rooms can cost up to £2,000 a night, was referred to as “a place where Mr Cherney frequently met with his criminal associates”.
The case, which is expected to last several weeks when it restarts in September, could see up to 70 witnesses called, including Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich. Cherney will give evidence via video link from his Israeli home because he is wanted in Spain for questioning in relation to a money-laundering investigation.
Justice Andrew Smith said he would allow at least one witness to remain anonymous over fears of reprisals for revealing the extent of extortion in Russia, which both sides agree was rife in the 1990s.
The trial continues.
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