Olga Gutovska is a lawyer based in London and a managing partner of a law firm Gutovska & Partners.
In 2021 Olga set up a new firm, called WWRT Limited, together with another lawyer, Georgina Squire. Later WWRT purchased several claims worth over USD 400 million. While WWRT does not publicize its claims, there is some interesting information available from the search of court registries. One of the cases information about which is publicly available is a recent case of WWRT v Mr and Mrs Tyshchenko.
It is a GBP 65 million (about USD 88 million) against a couple from Eastern Europe. According to the order of the English High Court, the claim was purchased at a discount from the bank in liquidation. Judge Bacon in the order described the claim as follows: “the claim is founded on an allegation that the Defendants carried out an extensive fraud on the Ukrainian bank, JSC Fortuna Bank (Fortuna Bank), between 2011 and 2014, during which time the bank was (it is claimed) ultimately owned by Mr Tyshchenko.
The fraud is said to have been carried out through the grant of multiple loans to borrowing companies that did not engage in substantial commercial activity and who had no intention of repaying the loans.
The bank was subsequently declared insolvent and was liquidated, in the course of which a package of its assets, including the disputed loans, was sold to a Ukrainian company called Star Investment One LLC (Star). Star in turn sold those rights and assets to WWRT in March 2020. WWRT’s case is that following those two assignments it has now acquired the rights to bring the claim relied upon in the present proceedings”.
Olga Gutovska is a lawyer, an entrepreneur and a managing partner of a law firm Gutovska & Partners. She graduated from Queen Mary University of London, and was a laureate of Chevening award from the UK government. Previously she also set up Livius, a legal technologies and investigations business.
Source of photos: Olga Gutovska’s Facebook page.
