The British businessman of Georgian origin, Tamaz Somhishvili, in an open letter appealed to the President of Ukraine with a request to influence the situation with the protection of investors' rights due to legal disputes with the Kyiv city administration, which have been going on for 15 years.
It is about the reconstruction project of Kharkiv Square in Kyiv, which regulates the flow of cars from the Boryspil highway, as part of preparations for the 2012 European Football Championship. In 2007, the company "Kyiv Terminal", owned by Tamaz Somkhishvili, won the tender for the implementation of this project and signed an investment agreement with the KMDA, under which it undertook to build a hotel and office complex, an exhibition center, a bus station and other necessary infrastructure, as well as to pay up to the city budget is almost 14 million dollars.
"Today, such projects are called public-private partnerships. However, the attitude that I encountered and continue to encounter from the authorities of the capital can be called in different ways, but it is by no means a partnership. While the investment project was operating, I had the opportunity to see all the circles of bureaucratic hell that a private investor can face: actions that included both project sabotage and a blatant violation of obligations to the investor," says an open letter to Tamaz Somkhishvili to Volodymyr Zelenskyi.
According to the businessman, the city officials constantly delayed the issuance of the necessary permits, and later terminated the contract, which resulted in the investor losing about 24 million dollars. KMDA agreed to indemnify the damages in the event of their assessment by independent experts, but after fulfilling this condition, "Kyiv Terminal" was again denied compensation. Because of this, Somhishvili appealed to the court. In 2019, the Kyiv Commercial Court satisfied his claim and ordered the KMDA to pay the businessman 24.4 million US dollars.
"In 2022, when the war is going on in Ukraine, I immediately offered the city a settlement agreement, according to which I refused the funds awarded to me in the court of first instance and offered to provide a plot after the end of martial law for the construction of an infrastructure project in Kyiv... However, the city government not only rejected this offer, and an organized mass campaign of slander and false accusations on an unprecedented scale began against me. These accusations not only show the attitude towards me as an investor who fulfilled all his obligations and did not violate any of them, but also the attitude towards my country - Great Britain, which is helping Ukraine the most at this time", - notes Tamaz Somhishvili.
According to him, the state and intelligence agencies of Ukraine, in particular the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, have confirmed that there are no grounds for false and slanderous accusations against him. The authorities of Great Britain, of which Somkhishvili is a citizen, also have no claims against him. "But this does not stop both those who are the executors of the accusations and their beneficiaries," the statement said.
It is noted that in 2021, Tamaz Somhishvili also publicly addressed Volodymyr Zelenskyi regarding this problem. In response, the President of Ukraine emphasized that it is a consequence of the lack of reform of the judicial system and that the situation will change for the better in the future.
Tamaz Somhishvili is a British citizen, the founder of the TS Holding business group, which unites more than a dozen Georgian companies. Somhishvili received British citizenship in 2007, in connection with which he stopped doing business in Russia in 2008, and in 2010, where he was a co-founder of several companies. Last week, it became known about the conclusion of the Content Analysis Center regarding the accusations made against Somkhishvili by several Ukrainian bloggers. According to the Center's experts, the campaign against Somkhishvili has signs of deliberate discrediting.
