By Ben Butler From The Sydney Morning Herald

Former BHP Billiton chief executive Brian Gilbertson has been blasted by a Cayman Islands judge for pursuing a years-long legal ”vendetta” and ”feud” against Russia’s third-richest man, Viktor Vekselberg, over shares in a mining company and the fabled Faberge jewellery brand name.

Justice Angus Foster of the Cayman Islands Grand Court last week ruled that it would be an abuse of process to allow Mr Gilbertson’s Jersey-based family trust to continue with a lawsuit against Mr Vekselberg, fellow Russian oligarch Vladimir Kutnetsov and the pair’s Renova group.

The lawsuit, over $2.5 million reaped from the sale of shares in Australian miner Consolidated Minerals in 2006, followed a far larger stoush in the same court over control of the Faberge brand, which Mr Gilbertson’s Pallinghurst Group bought from Unilever for $US38 million in 2007.

Justice Foster said the fight over the share purchase – ”Project Charlie” – should have been heard at the same time as the battle over the Faberge deal, ”Project Egg”.

”It would have brought appropriate and desirable finality to the litigation between them,” the judge said in a ruling on Tuesday. ”The present proceedings simply prolong what has all the appearance of a vendetta and that should, in the public interest, be brought to an end. The process of the court is, in my view, being misused and that should not be allowed.”

Mr Gilbertson’s association with the Russian oligarchs dates to 2004, when he met Mr Vekselberg and became the CEO of Siberian Urals Aluminium Company, in which Renova held a major stake.

At about the same time, Mr Gilbertson, who received a controversial package worth up to $38 million when he resigned from BHP in 2003 after just six months in the job, and Mr Vekselberg, named by Forbes as the 50th-richest man in the world with a net worth of $US17.1 billion, discussed starting an investment business together.

They set up a joint venture, a complex Cayman Islands structure to be funded by Renova and managed by Mr Gilbertson.

Things went awry in 2006, as Mr Gilbertson negotiated to buy the Faberge name from Unilever. Mr Vekselberg, a connoisseur of Faberge eggs who owns nine of the jewel-encrusted creations, insisted that one of his personal companies get title to the brand, although the benefits of reviving the brand would stay within the joint venture fund.

Just before Christmas, Mr Gilbertson went ahead and agreed to buy Faberge from Unilever without Mr Vekselberg’s involvement – something he acknowledged a couple of weeks later would make Mr Vekselberg ”extremely pissed off”.

Earlier, in August 2006, Renova bought $1.67 million of shares in Consolidated Minerals as part of ”Project Charlie”, a push by the joint venture fund into the mining industry.

Mr Gilbertson and Mr Vekselberg held a peace meeting in London on May 5, but the relationship could not be salvaged.

When Siberian Urals Aluminium Company merged with RUSAL and part of Glencore in 2007 to create what was billed as the world’s biggest aluminium producer, Mr Gilbertson was not part of the new executive team.

Renova went on to sell the Consolidated Minerals shares in December 2007, reaping a $2.5 million profit.

By 2010, the two sides were at war in the Cayman Islands court over the Faberge deal. In August 2012, Justice Foster found that Mr Gilbertson breached his fiduciary duties, but also found that Mr Vekselberg had suffered no loss because Faberge was not profitable.

In the latest lawsuit Nedgroup Trust (Jersey), which is the trustee of the Brian Gilbertson Discretionary Settlement, said it wanted to act on behalf of Pallinghurst to recover a share of the $2.5 million profit. Pointing out this amounted to a ”relatively small” $US750,000, Justice Foster said he was ”satisfied that the present claim has not been brought genuinely in the interest of the company but for Mr Gilbertson’s own reasons”.

Justice Foster said Mr Gilbertson was using Pallinghurst ”to further pursue his personal fight with Mr Vekselberg”.

”Mr Gilbertson is behind the bringing of these proceedings in furtherance of his feud with Mr Vekselberg,” he said.

IMAGE: Legal ‘vendetta’ against Russian: Brian Gilbertson. Photo: Rob Homer

For more on this story go to: http://www.smh.com.au/business/caymans-court-lambastes-former-bhp-chief-brian-gilbertson-20140727-3cnkw.html#ixzz38s9YfzrK