MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian court has ordered UniCredit (BIT:) to pay 448.2 million euros in a lawsuit, related to a halted gas project, brought by St. Petersburg-based RusChemAlliance, a joint venture subsidiary to 50% by the Russian gas giant Gazprom.
UniCredit was one of the guarantor financiers of a contract to build a gas processing plant in Russia with Germany’s Linde, which was terminated due to Western sanctions against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.
“The request has been satisfied in full,” the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court said.
UniCredit preferred not to comment.
In mid-May the court had ordered the seizure of 462.7 million euros in securities, properties and accounts belonging to UniCredit, as well as 100% of the shares of UniCredit Leasing and UniCredit Garant.
UniCredit Leasing and UniCredit Garant are subsidiaries of AO UniCredit Bank, the Russian arm of the Italian group. In May UniCredit said that the seizure concerned only part of the Russian subsidiary’s assets and not the entire branch.
Following the seizure of assets, the Russian division of UniCredit agreed with RusChemAlliance to pledge Russian Treasury bonds OFZ, with a market value of approximately 50 billion rubles.
When the gas project was stopped, RusChemAlliance had made a €2 billion advance payment on the €10 billion contract, according to the UK Supreme Court website.
UniCredit had issued part of the guarantee package to RusChem on behalf of Linde.
(Translated by Camilla Borri, editing Claudia Cristoferi)
