Court Prevents Argentem Creek Partners as a Creditor from Selling GNT Group’s Grain Terminal in Odesa

On February 7, 2023, the Nicosia District Court (Cyprus) issued an order preventing the creditor, Argentem Creek Partners (ACP), and its agent Madison Pacific Trust Ltd (Hong Kong), from taking action aimed at gaining possession, encumbering, or selling the grain terminal in Odesa Commercial Sea Port owned by the GNT Group and its rightful owners, Volodymyr Naumenko and Sergiy Groza.

Shareholders had to seek the order because of the quite aggressive actions taken by creditors against the GNT Group. Owners of the Group referred the matter to the court in Cyprus to limit the threats to the operation of the grain corridor caused by such actions.

According to the GNT Group’s earlier statements, the creditors are trying to devalue the business for the subsequent non-transparent resale of the company’s assets to an interested third party. Volodymyr Naumenko and Sergiy Groza, owners of the GNT Group, emphasized in their interview with Censor Business that they “...kept negotiating the debt restructuring in the first half of December not to lose the GNT Group’s working capital, as its loss would worsen its performance indicators...” However, by all appearances, the creditors started with the company’s hostile takeover in late December.

It became known on February 6 that the ACP initiated the bankruptcy of Olimpex Coupe International, the company that operates the grain terminal. Thus, the creditor decided to drive the grain terminal to bankruptcy during the war and amidst grain corridor operations to benefit from selling the company. The creditors do not care that agrarian producers would hardly entrust their grain to a company managed by a bankruptcy trustee, thus endangering the operation of the grain agreements. 

Fortunately