15.02.2010. E24.Grove Invest suing SEB for 1.49 billion

The breaking news that shook the Estonian public is in front of you! None of our top businessmen have had the guts to sue banks… or rather: none of them have had the money to defend themselves in court after being blitzed by banks. Read on and you will see that these businessmen are serious, or they wouldn't have paid the state some 1.5 million kroons as a guarantee for filing the action!

OÜ Grove Invest is accusing SEB Bank and Leasing of causing the economic difficulties, liquidity problems and bankruptcy of its subsidiary Baltic Panel Group and is suing the bank for 1.49 billion kroons in damages.

Attorney-at-law Erki Kergandberg, who represents OÜ Grove Invest which is partly owned by Pyotr Sedin, said that his client decided to sue the bank because Baltic Panel Group OÜ (BPG), which was founded in 2005 for production of plywood, lost its investment as well as the company itself as a result of the forceful interference of SEB Bank and Leasing in the company's management. ‘There was a delay in launching the plywood factory, because the supplier of the equipment was unable to make the equipment work and SEB Bank and Leasing did not agree with the possible solutions offered by Grove Invest and Baltic Panel Group to the problems. This resulted in liquidity problems for Baltic Panel Group and the court declared the company bankrupt on 12 May 2008,’ he said. Board member and shareholder of OÜ Grove Invest Jüri Triletski says that the plywood factory in Kohila, which cost 500 million kroons to build, had the labour, the raw materials and the client base on export markets it needed and also a profit insurance contract with one of the world's largest insurers Zurich. ‘If the bank had not stood in our way when we were trying to resolve the technical issues we faced in launching the factory, the factory of Baltic Panel Group would be working at full capacity today, making 50,000 cubic metres of plywood per year, generating a turnover of 535 million kroons per year with its EBITDA at 230 million kroons per year, and it would be employing some 150 people in Kohila,’ said Triletski.

E24 Äriuudised 15.02.2010