MOSCOW, June 3 (RAPSI) – The Moscow Commercial Court decided on Wednesday to postpone until July 8 a hearing on a suit filed by Emerging Markets Structured Product (EMSP) seeking 16 billion rubles ($300 million) from loan guarantors for Sergei Polonsky’s company Potok, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

The sides’ attorneys said in court on Wednesday that they had failed to settle the dispute out of court. The court has postponed the hearing on its own initiative.

According to the media, EMSP is acting on behalf of Sberbank CIB, the corporate and investment banking business of Sberbank created as part of the integration of Sberbank and Troika Dialog. EMSP filed the lawsuit in September 2013.

Polonsky is the founder of Potok (formerly Mirax Group), a diversified corporation that has been involved in several large development projects including Federation Tower in the Moscow International Business Center, office buildings Mirax Plaza, Poklonnaya 11 and Admiral, condominium developments Fort Kutuzov, Kutuzovskaya Riviera, Rublyovskaya Riviera, Mirax Park, Golden Keys 1 and 2, and the Well House.

He ceded operational control of the company in 2012. Potok announced in October 2012 that businessman Alexei Alyakin signed a framework agreement to buy 100 percent of the company’s stock from Polonsky. However, in February 2013 Polonsky, who was in prison in Cambodia at the time, sent an order to Potok to dismiss Alyakin from his positions in the company.

The court rejected a  petition filed by Polonsky to involve him as a third party in the lawsuit. He argued that a contract of March 15, 2012 signed between the Stroyka Finance Limited(borrower) and the defendants (guarantors) was secured by a guarantee agreement signed between EMSP, Polonsky and Troika Dialog. He further stated that granting of the lawsuit would result in recourse claims against Polonsky, who is the controlling shareholder of the guarantor companies.

Polonsky, deported from Cambodia on May 17, is being held at a detention facility in Moscow. Polonsky was charged in Russia in absentia in July 2012 as part of a criminal case involving the embezzlement of over $175 million from the investors in an up-market condominium project in central Moscow.
On January 13, 2014, Moscow's Tverskoy District Court seized the stock of the foreign companies owned by Polonsky, who assessed them at $100 million.