Kernel sued Sense Bank: the agroholding explained the reason

Kernel Agroholding has published an official position on the legal dispute with Sense Bank and its affiliated company Greatford.

The dispute concerns obligations that arose long before the nationalization of the bank, Kernel said.

The lawsuit against Sense Bank and its affiliated company Greatford is aimed solely at protecting the company’s commercial interests and is not an action against the state or a state-owned bank, the agroholding added.

As Kernel said, in the spring of 2021, the management of the bank, which until December 2022 was called Alfa-Bank Ukraine, offered the agroholding to provide it with financing on a term basis, at interest.

The agreement was technically formalized as the purchase of Kernel debt securities (LPN) from the bank’s affiliated company Greatford – such a structure is called a REPO agreement and, in economic essence, is a credit transaction in which securities serve as collateral.

All negotiations on the agreement were conducted by bank employees. Through the Cypriot company Etrecom, which is part of the Kernel group, the company transferred about 30.9 million US dollars to the bank. It was assumed that Greatford would buy back the securities in a year, and Kernel would receive its funds with coupon income – the yield under the agreement was supposed to be 5.75% per annum.

The bank was supposed to return the financing in May-June 2022, but at the initiative of the bank, the deadline was extended until the end of September 2022. The bank did not return the funds by the agreed date. At the same time, Kernel, for its part, fully fulfilled all its obligations: the company repaid all its credit obligations to the bank on time.

Since it was the bank that initiated the agreement, determined its terms and conducted all negotiations, and Greatford performed a purely technical role, Kernel considers the bank to be a full party to the obligation to return the financing. Therefore, Etrecom appealed to the Commercial Court of Kyiv with a demand to oblige Sense Bank and Greatford to jointly return the provided financing, including interest.

This is a demand to return its own funds, which were transferred to the bank as a loan according to a structure developed and proposed by the bank itself.

Earlier, USM reported that Grant Thornton increased the value of Kernel shares for a sell-out.