MEMORANDUM AND ORDER On February 20, 2024, Petitioners Loudmila and Veronica Bourlakova (“the Bourlakovas”) filed an ex parte application for discovery pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1782, seeking to serve a subpoena on Clearing House Payments Company L.L.C. (“CHIPS”) in aid of their civil litigation in the United Kingdom (“U.K. Proceeding”). (ECF No. 1.) The Court granted that application on February 22, 2024. (ECF No. 7.) On March 25, 2024, Nikolai and Vera Kazakov (“the Kazakovs”) filed a motion to intervene, to vacate the Court’s February 22 order, and to quash the subpoena. (ECF No. 8.) For the reasons that follow, the Kazakovs’ motion to intervene is granted; the motion to vacate this Court’s order and quash the subpoena is denied. I. Background This application stems from wide-ranging disputes over $3.7 billion in assets left by Russian businessman Oleg Bourlakov (“Mr. Bourlakov”), who died of COVID-19 in 2021. (ECF No. 3
10, 17.) Mr. Bourlakov’s estranged wife, Loudmila Bourlakova, and their daughter, Veronica Bourlakova, brought suit in the High Court of Justice in London against Mr. Bourlakov, the Kazakovs, and ten other defendants. (ECF No. 3-1 at 2.) The Bourlakovas alleged in the U.K. Proceeding that following a breakdown of marital and familial relationships, Mr. Bourlakov, acting in concert with the Kazakovs, had pursued a strategy of “hid[ing] Bourlakov Family Assets from his wife and adult daughters” through “a variety of fraudulent and unlawful means.” (ECF No. 3 11; see ECF No. 3-1 4.) This included, for example, “[c]oncocting false stories that half of the Bourlakov family assets…belongs to Mr Bourlakov’s brother in law, Mr Kazakov,” and “[m]isappropriating assets from [the Bourlakovas] and arranging for those assets to be placed in structures which are owned and/or controlled by Mr Bourlakov [and the Kazakovs].” (ECF No. 3-1 5.) As relevant here, the Bourlakovas suspected transfers of Bourlakov family assets into “entities or bank accounts controlled by the Kazakovs,” some of which were denominated in U.S. dollars and involved U.S.-based correspondent banks. (ECF No. 3
