For nearly 15 years, Alexander Gorbachev held a grudge.
It all began in a London sauna in 2005. There, Gorbachev claims his former Komsomol associate turned oligarch, Andrey Guriev — who heads the Russian fertilizer empire PhosAgro — promised him nearly a quarter of the company, where Gorbachev had previously served as a director.
But the promise was never put on paper, and as time wore on, their friendship soured. PhosAgro grew without Gorbachev and in 2018 had a valuation of over $5bn. That figure put Gorbachev’s potential stake at just under $1.25bn — a sum worthy of litigation.
So Gorbachev, now living in the United Kingdom after having fled Russia, hatched a plan to sue his former friend. But taking an oligarch to court requires deep pockets.
He found a solution in Joshua Wander. As co-founder of the Miami-based private capital firm 777 Partners, Wander had built his fortune in the slow-burn world of structured settlements and was looking to expand into more exciting, yet riskier, realms of private credit.
Wander struck a deal with Gorbachev to bankroll his legal offensive against the now-sanctioned Guriev with an £8m cash injection. Through a subsidiary vehicle dubbed Sphinx Funding,...
