World Congress vice-president in £22m fraud

A COURT has found that Andrey Adamovsky, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, defrauded former business partners to the tune of $34.7 million (£22.3 million).

A British Virgin Islands (BVI) court handed down the verdict last October, but Mr Adamovsky, who was found to have illicitly deprived two co-owners of his Oledo Petroleum company of their 45 per cent share of its sale, has not yet paid them back.

The 53-year-old was born in Kyrgyzstan and is now co-president of the Association of Jewish Organisations and Communities — a rabbi’s council — in Ukraine, in addition to his WJC role.

At the end of the five-year case — during which Mr Adamovsky made “ridiculous” and “rubbish” claims, according to prosecuting lawyer Martin Kenney — the judge found he had indeed conned his business partners.

One day before the proceeds arrived fromthesaleof OledoPetroleum’sshare in Vik Oil, a Ukrainian petrochemicals company, Mr Adamovsky terminated shareholder Andriy Malitskiy’s powers over their joint bank account.

The court noted that Mr Adamovsky then shifted the $71.6 million fee, only half of which was legally his, to Stockman Interhold SA, his other BVI corporation, without the knowledge of his co-owners.

The judge said Mr Adamovsky was “selfish”, adding that he “had no right to expropriate the property of others for his own advantage”.

Mr Kenney, a Canadian lawyer who specialises in prosecuting large-scale fraudsters, said it was “unconscionable” that a proven thief could still represent the WJC.

A WJC representative said: “Mr Adamovsky’s civil litigation over a commercial dispute is totally unrelated to the WJC or the Jewish community of Ukraine. It began and ended before he became a member of the WJC Executive Committee in March 2015.

“Mr Adamovsky, like all other exofficio vice-presidents of the WJC, only speaks on behalf the WJC when explicitly mandated to do so by the WJC president or the CEO.”