By Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice reporter of 
The money belonged to the woman and her father, a Russian lawyer and businessman. Photo: 123rf
A woman took US$10 million (NZ$16.9m) from a bank account she shared with her father and gave most of it to her lover to invest on her behalf, only for him to flee to Italy with it.
Russian woman Inna Shibalova had fallen in love with a married man, Andrey Ivanov, and believed he would invest the money on her behalf, so she could provide for her mother and sister.
Shibalova also believed Ivanov would leave his wife to be with her.
Under the guise of his imminent divorce from his wife, Ivanov travelled to Italy and assured Shibalova that he'd invested the money, but instead, he took the money and disappeared.
When Shibalova, who was living in Melbourne at the time, realised she had been deceived, she engaged Australian private investigations firm MPOL Group Pty (MPOL) to recover the money.
MPOL contracted a Switzerland-based investigations firm to help and, after hundreds of hours of work and almost a decade later, the money was returned to the Shibalova family.
Now, Shibalova has been ordered to pay Swiss firm Business Control Schweiz (BCS) about €2.6m (NZ$5.1m) in commission for its work tracking down her former lover and finding the money he'd taken.
The case is being heard in New Zealand, after BCS tracked Shibalova to Northland, where she now resides, and applied to the High Court at Whangārei to sue her for her breach of contract and claim of its commission.
Speaking to NZME, Shibalova said she was 27 when Ivanov, whom she described as a "professional confidence trickster", took the money in 2005.
"I fell in love and trusted him with my family money," she said.
The money she took was from a Hong Kong bank account she and her father, who was a Russian lawyer and businessman, operated and were both signatories for.
It had come from the sale of shares in a Russian port company of which Shibalova was a majority shareholder, though her father was the beneficial owner.
Shibalova accessed the money to provide for herself, her sister and her mother, as she did not trust her father to provide for them.
While Shibalova told her father she'd taken the $10m to give to the Red Cross, she actually transferred $9.6m of it to Ivanov's account on the promise he would invest the money on her behalf and then leave his wife.
After realising she had been duped, Shibalova hired MPOL to find the money and agreed to pay investigation fees, expenses and disbursements, plus 35 percent commission on any returned money.
During MPOL's investigation, the firm engaged the services of BCS, but Shibalova maintains she hired MPOL, not BCS, and no-one had told her the contract had been assigned to the latter.
"No-one ever told me about this assignment until December 2020," she told NZME, with that date being when BCS filed its claim with the High Court.
"The claim, proceedings and outcome has caused me and my family a great deal of distress and anguish, and continue to do so."
Frozen funds and criminal proceedings
According to the High Court decision released this month, the investigators located the missing money in a Sicilian bank account in 2007 and travelled to Sicily.
Italian police told investigators it was the largest electronic transfer ever made to a Sicilian account.
They were suspicious the money was from the proceeds of crime and the private investigators were arrested.
Eventually, however, they accepted the funds were legitimately obtained by Shibalova's family and had been stolen from her, and the investigators were released, but the mone -, about €7m (NZD$13.49m) - remained frozen by order of an Italian court.
Meanwhile, in 2008, the private investigators discovered Ivanov was living in London with his wife. They advised Italian authorities, and criminal and civil proceedings commenced against him.
In 2012, Ivanov was imprisoned and an order was made for restitution of the stolen funds to Shibalova. The Italian Court insisted the funds could only be returned to her and not to her father.
Her father filed an appeal, which related to half of the frozen funds.
Soon after, the other half was released to Shibalova's Sicilian lawyer, whom she had made power of attorney.
However, the High Court heard that Shibalova had entered into a side agreement with her father, unbeknown to the investigators, for him to help her as a witness in the Italian court proceedings, and, in exchange, any money recovered would be transferred directly to him.
The agreement stated that the money must be transferred, either by Shibalova or her lawyer, to an account nominated by her father. It also forbade Shibalova from making payments to the investigators.
A letter detailing the agreement was produced to the High Court as evidence, but BCS did not accept the authenticity of the letter, nor the agreement, and suggested they may have been fabricated.
In 2015, the remainder of the money was released.
The investigators continued to request payment for their services, but Shibalova's Sicilian lawyer untruthfully told them the money was still being held in a government-controlled fund in Italy.
Shibalova claims she has paid about A$450,000 ($490,000) to MPOL in fees and disbursements, but never paid the 35 percent commission fee on the money returned.
Meanwhile, MPOL went into liquidation in 2013. Its director Mark Grover was charged with improperly taking money from one of his companies and was bankrupted in 2015.
BCS continued chasing the owed commission fee and tracked down Shibalova's father, who agreed to pay it but never did.
The firm went on to file the civil claim against Shibalova in the High Court at Whangārei in 2020.
Failing to uphold the agreement
At a week-long hearing in October last year, Shibalova represented herself and argued against paying the commission.
She claimed she was only required to pay it if MPOL recovered the funds from Ivanov and pointed out the Italian courts had frozen the money and released it to them.
She also argued there was no valid assignment of the contract to BCS and that the funds had been paid back to her father, not to her.
Further, Shibalova submitted that BCS' claim was outside the limitation period for bringing litigation.
However, Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith disagreed with Shibalova's defence, finding she'd agreed with MPOL freely and the firm had upheld its end of the bargain and she was now failing to uphold hers.
"She contends that she had little choice as there was no other apparent way to secure the return of the stolen money, but that situation was not created by MPOL," Justice Wilkinson-Smith said in the decision.
"It resulted from Ms Shibalova's dishonest actions in taking the US$10m in the first place and transferring it to Mr Ivanov."
Justice Wilkinson-Smith said Shibalova failed to tell the investigators when the money had been released and "deliberately misled" them when they continued to ask.
"I consider that Ms Shibalova was deliberately fraudulent in her dealings with MPOL and BCS and sought to fraudulently conceal the repayment of the money to avoid any liability to pay the commission," Justice Wilkinson-Smith found.
She ruled that failing to pay the commission was a breach of contract and that MPOL did have the right to assign the contract to BCS and that, ultimately, BCS was owed the commission fee.
Justice Wilkinson-Smith ordered Shibalova to pay BCS €2,678,215, which converts to about NZD$5.1m.
She also ordered Shibalova to pay 5 percent interest per year from April 2015.
"Ms Shibalova may not have been the beneficial owner of the money, but she chose to enter into a contract to pay a fee of 35 percent of the money 'collected' on her behalf and returned to her," the decision said.
"It was 'collected' on her behalf and returned to her. What she chose to do with the money did not extinguish her obligations under the contract.
"Her competing obligations to her father did not extinguish her contractual obligations."
BCS chief executive Pascal Oswald told NZME its team of investigators at the firm had done extensive work on Shibalova's case.
"Business Control (Schweiz) AG is committed to vigorously defending the interests of our clients, especially in complex international fraud recovery matters," Oswald said.
"Successfully navigating such cases - particularly in sensitive regions like Southern Italy - requires persistence, discretion, and deep local understanding.
"At the same time, we stand firm when it comes to asserting our own rightful claims. Integrity and determination guide our work, whether we act on behalf of clients or in our own interest."
Shibalova told NZME she was considering her appeal options.
* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.
