Russian Litigation Funder’s Counsel Departs for New Venture (1)

The lead counsel for Russian litigation firm A1 announced Thursday that he has left the company, writing in a social media post that he is ready for “a new chapter in my career.”

Dmitri Tchernenko announced his departure on LinkedIn hours after a Bloomberg Law investigation detailed the role he and A1 have played in funding lawsuits in the US and the UK on behalf of Russian banks.

A1, a subsidiary of Russian financial giant Alfa group, was founded by three Russian billionaires with ties to the Kremlin. The company and its attorneys have worked to continue funding cases even after its directors were sanctioned by Western governments.

Tchernenko, who has been with A1 for five years, wrote that he left the company on Tuesday. He expressed his gratitude “for all the trust and opportunities A1 provided.”

Last week, in email correspondence with Bloomberg Law, Tchernenko said he would “shortly be leaving A1” to devote his time to a series of cases being litigated in London and the United States.

Tchernenko led unsuccessful efforts by A1 and US law firms to help return about $6.1 million to Moscow on March 15, 2022, hours after A1’s three leading directors were sanctioned by the UK. The money had been recovered in a New York bankruptcy case on behalf of a sanctioned Russian bank and a government agency seeking to recover nearly $2 billion stolen by its former owners.

A1 is funding at least a dozen lawsuits around the world, Tchernenko wrote last week in response to questions.

Much of the company’s work is being done for Russia’s equivalent of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is seeking to recover billions of dollars stolen by owners of private banks in Moscow and around the country over the past two decades. In most of the cases, Russian courts have awarded damages or approved asset forfeitures. A1 hired Western law firms to help track and seize money and property the former bank owners may have hidden away, according to allegations in a string of court cases.

But those efforts have been hampered by sanctions put in place after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, prompting A1 to seek ways around them. Six days after three of its directors were sanctioned in the UK, for example, they sold the company for about $900 to another A1 director who hadn’t been sanctioned, according to testimony this month in one of the London bankruptcy cases.

At a hearing in London earlier this month, attorneys for a fugitive Russian banker fighting to keep A1 and its clients from taking his assets called the sale a sham designed to evade sanctions. A judge is now deciding whether the sale was legitimate, as A1 alleges, or a ploy to secretly keep its sanctioned leaders in charge.

Tchernenko, in the email to Bloomberg Law, said his company stopped funding all lawsuits in the US when A1 was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department on Sept. 14, 2023.