the times | Monday April 4 2022 13News
A firm of British accountants is in line
to earn millions of pounds for acting as
trustees in a bankruptcy case involving
Kremlin-linked entities — despite it
having pledged to ditch Russian clients.
Grant Thornton, the sixth biggest
accountancy and audit practice in the
world, is the English trustee in High
Court bankruptcy proceedings against
Anatoly Motylev, the former owner of
the Russian Credit Bank, who is said to
owe more than £2 billion.
Legal experts said that depending on
the assets that can be recovered, the
accountancy firm was likely to earn up
to £10 million in fees from the litigation.
Motylev, who has lived in London for
the past seven years, was made bank-Russian banks that were part of Moty-
lev’s business group.
In October the High Court tempora-
rily suspended an earlier discharge of
Motylev from bankruptcy in advance
of a full hearing. The court said there
were reasonable grounds that a full
order suspending Motylev’s discharge
from bankruptcy would be made at the
substantive hearing.
Grant Thorton — which last year
logged record global earnings of more
than £5 billion — pointed out that
under English law bankruptcy trustees
are officers of the court and do not
advise individual creditors.
In a statement to The Times, the firm
said the High Court appointed “office
holders” as trustees in Motylev’s bank-
ruptcy in November 2020. It added:
“Their obligations remain to the court.
As and when distributions are available
to creditors, the trustees, as court-
appointed officers, will comply with the
laws prevailing at that time, including
those relating to recent sanctions.
“We fully stand behind the statement
on our website and reaffirm that we will
not provide services to clients that are
subject to sanctions, connected to the
Russian government, the Belarusian
government or those who support their
activities.”tions have also been re-assessed and
will continue to be monitored, and
appropriate action taken to ensure we
continue only to provide services to
clients aligned with our values.”
The most significant creditor in the
Motylev bankruptcy is understood to
be the Russian Deposit Insurance
Agency (DIA), which was acting on
behalf of other Russian banks.
The agency is an entity of the Rus-
sian government and is said to be close-
ly associated with the Russian Central
Bank and other sanctioned individuals.
That connection has triggered alle-
gations from some close to the litiga-
tion that Grant Thornton is “fronting”
the interests of the DIA in its capacity
as trustee to the creditors.
Starting in 2020, partners at Grant
Thornton, as the bankruptcy trustee,
took steps in the UK to investigate and
recover Motylev’s assets. That included
obtaining a worldwide freezing order,
as well as court-ordered searches of his
residence. The court also ordered
Motylev to surrender his passport.
It is understood that the bankruptcy
trustees have received claims in excess
of £800 million from creditors around
the world and that so far the DIA has
not submitted a claim.
About half the claimed creditors areThe biggest bottler of sunflower oil for
British shops has warned that only a
few weeks’ supply remains because of
the war in Ukraine.
Edible Oils said it was switching to
other oils, and food manufacturers are
reviewing their recipes.
Kim Matthews, commercial director
at Edible Oils, told the BBC that 80 per
cent of the global supply of sunflower
oil comes from Russia or Ukraine.
“With everything going on out there,
we physically can’t get sunflower to be
coming out of the country,” he said.
The company, based in Erith, south-
east London, packages oil for 75 per
cent of the UK retail market. Sunflower
oil is the most popular.
Matthews added: “Ukrainian farm-
ers should be sowing the seeds now for
the harvest in October and November.
Clearly that’s not going to happen... so
we could be impacted for 12 to 18
months.”
Russia announced last week that it
was banning the export of sunflower
seeds until the end of August and
imposing an export quota on sunflower
oil.
The National Edible Oil Distributors’
Association has said there will not be
enough British-grown rapeseed oil to
make up the shortfall. Its price has risen
by up to 80 per cent since the conflict
started.
The Food Standards Agency has ad-
vised shoppers with allergies to check
labels to see if the oil used in foodstuffs
has changed. Iceland supermarket has
said it was having to use palm oil again.Labour MP’s
‘treasonous’
Trident words
Steven SwinfordSir Keir Starmer has distanced himself
from comments by a Labour front-
bencher who said he would be “quite
happy” if Russian hackers knocked out
Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
Video from 2019 showed Fabian
Hamilton, the shadow minister for
peace and disarmament, telling a rally
that Russia could “already hack into the
software” controlling Trident. He said:
“Imagine for a minute... that they
could render them entirely useless.
“I’d be quite happy about that, as long
as we could do the same to theirs.”
Ben Wallace, the defence secretary,
told The Mail On Sunday that Hamilton
should be sacked. “It is one thing to dis-
agree with the UK’s possession of nu-
clear weapons, but to take the side of a
man who has deployed chemical weap-
ons... is treasonous,” he said.
A spokesman for Hamilton de-
scribed Wallace’s demands as “ludi-
crous”. A Labour source said: “Starmer
voted for the renewal of Trident and has
been clear that Labour’s support for the
deterrent is non-negotiable.”
Hamilton made the comments at a
rally by the Campaign for Nuclear Dis-
armament, when he was shadow de-
fence minister under Jeremy Corbyn.Accountancy firm
will earn millions
from Russian case
rupt in Russia in 2018. A Russian court
found him responsible for more than
£2 billion in debts that were triggered
by the collapse of his business. It has
been reported that more than a million
pensioners lost funds as result of his
bankruptcy and debt.
When President Putin’s troops invad-
ed Ukraine on February 24, Grant
Thornton issued a statement deploring
the military action. It said that it would
“not provide services to clients that are
subject to sanctions, connected to the
Russian government, the Belarusian
government or those who support their
activities.
“We can confirm that we are not pro-
viding services to the Russian or Bela-
rusian governments. Existing clients
with Russian or Belarusian connec-Jonathan Ames Legal EditorNews
still have not reached Britain
War causing
shortage of
sunflower oil
David BrownMarianna Vyshemirskaya
was pictured rushing to
safety. Footage of her
being interviewed was
used by Russian media
to dismiss western
reports of the bombinghad happened. “I
commented that there
were pregnant women
in the maternity
hospital,” she said.
“They also asked if
there was an airstrike.
I answered that there
were two blasts but no
accompanying noises
either before or after.”
Vyshemirskaya said
that this answer “did
not suit” the reporters
and it did not feature
in their articles.
Russian media
suggested that there
was no attack or that
Ukrainians caused the
explosions. It was
unclear where
Vyshemirskaya was
when she gave the
interview.
Ukrainian social
media posters
speculated that she
may be one of the
refugees allegedly
taken to Russia
through “filtration
camps” in eastern
Ukraine. Unconfirmed
reports suggested that
she was in the
territory of the
separatist Donetsk
People’s Republic.
In the 25-minute
interview she said that
she had moved to
Mariupol in 2020 from
Makiivka, a town in
the Donetsk region.
In another part of
the interview, she
contradicted the
Russian government’s
claim that she also
“played the role” of a
pregnant woman seen
being carried on a
stretcher. “That was
not me,” she said.
“That was another
woman, who died. She
was taken to hospital
but neither she nor
her child survived.”report about the
interview on Saturday.
It was titled: “The
Ukrainian model who
became a hero of
western publications
has unmasked the fake
story about an
airstrike on a
maternity hospital in
Mariupol”.
Critics said that
Moscow was using the
interview to muddy
the waters of the
attack by cherry-
picking information
that appeared to cast
doubt on what
happened, when it
concerned only minor
discrepancies.
Vyshemirskaya said
that before the attack
Ukrainian soldiers had
taken food that was for
pregnant women,
saying they had not
eaten for five days.
During the strike
her face was cut and
she took refuge in a
basement.
Vyshemirskaya,
known as a “beauty
blogger” on Instagram,
also said she was
unhappy about being
filmed by reporters
from the Associated
Press news agency,
whose footage and
photographs were
published around the
world. She said
reporters had visited
her afterwards, when
she had just given
birth to a daughter,
and asked her whatPHOTOGRAPHS:
EVGENIY MALOLETKA/AP