Asters is representing Eugene Kazmin, a Ukrainian national and the owner of the KVV Group, a scrap metal holding company in Ukraine, in investment arbitration against the Republic of Latvia.
Kazmin acquired non-operational Latvian metallurgical giant Liepajas Metalurgs Joint Stock Company ("Liepajas Metalurgs") at the end of 2014 as a result of a public tender and invested millions of dollars into the plant to resume its operations in 2015. According to Asters, he believes that, in violation of his rights, "the State of Latvia, the insolvency administrator of Liepajas Metalurgs, and the consultant to the administrator and the club of Liepajas Metalurgs’ creditor, Prudentia, failed to fulfill the promises they gave to Mr. Kazmin during the tender. As a result, the plant could no longer be operated profitably and had to be mothballed shortly after it resumed its operations. In response, the Government bankrupted the plant and is now seeking new investors for the giant, effectively expropriating Mr. Kazmin's multimillion dollar investment."
The arbitration is commenced under the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Latvia and the Government of Ukraine for the promotion and reciprocal protection of investments signed on July 24, 1997 and will be administered under the ICSID Convention and Arbitration Rules.
Asters is representing Eugene Kazmin together with Jones Day. The Asters arbitration team on the project consists of Managing Partner Oleksiy Didkovskiy and Counsel Yaroslav Petrov.
