“It is a little bit odd” that a Russian businessman is trying to use the RICO statute to collect an arbitration award issued in London and recognized in Liechtenstein over a failed Moscow real estate project, Justice Elena Kagan said at a Supreme Court hearing Tuesday.

“All of that is derivative on a dispute that is fundamentally foreign in nature, between foreign parties, involving foreign conduct, initially adjudicated in a foreign country,” she told an attorney for Vitaly Smagin in his quest to collect nearly $90 million from his ex-partner Ashot Yegiazaryan.