Malaysian Boeing crash in Ukraine. File photoWASHINGTON, May 2.A court in New York allowed the law firm Latham & Watkins does not represent the interests of VTB in the framework of the lawsuit filed by the family of an American who died in a Malaysian plane crash over Ukraine in 2014. The decision comes into force on June 3, therefore, as the document says, VTB must find a new representative by June 2. The lawsuit was filed in the US federal court for the Southern District of New York against Sberbank, VTB, and Western Union money transfer services and MoneyGram for «providing services to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.» The plaintiffs are relatives of 19-year-old American Quin Shansman, one of the passengers of the Malaysian Boeing. The Malaysian Boeing, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on flight MH17, crashed on July 17, 2014 near Donetsk. There were 298 people on board, all of them died. Kyiv immediately blamed the militias for the crash, but they said that they did not have the means to shoot down the plane at such a height. Ukraine refused to provide data from its radars, and the United States did not transfer satellite images to the investigation, where, as they claim the moment the missile was launched. As Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Nikolai Vinnichenko told RIA Novosti, the Russian side handed over to the Netherlands not only Russian radar data, but also documentation showing that the Buk missile that hit Boeing belonged to Ukraine, and it was launched from Kyiv-controlled territory, but the investigators ignored this information. At the same time, on the first day of the court hearing, the prosecution admitted that it had received and was studying the data of the Russian prosecutor's office. The investigation was conducted by a joint investigation team led by the Dutch Attorney General without the participation of Russia. The investigation claims that the Boeing was shot down from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which belonged to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of the RF Armed Forces from Kursk, from the territory controlled by the militia. The line of state prosecution is based on the testimony of exclusively anonymous witnesses. The defense of the Russian accused in the case, Oleg Pulatov, stated that this makes it difficult to assess the reliability of their testimony, but the Dutch prosecutor's office insists that anonymity is necessary for security reasons. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that accusations of Russia's involvement in the Boeing crash were unfounded and regrettable, and biased and one-sided. According to the head of the department, Sergei Lavrov, it is full of double standards.
