A Russian court ordered Italian bank UniCredit to pay 448.2 million euros ($479.44 million) in a lawsuit over an aborted gas project brought by RusChemAlliance, a St. Petersburg-based joint venture and 50% owned by the Russian gas giant Gazprom.
UniCredit was one of the guarantor lenders for a contract to build a gas processing plant in Russia with German company Linde, which was terminated due to Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.
“The request is fully satisfied,” the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court said in a document.
UniCredit declined to comment.
The court decided in mid-May to seize 462.7 million euros of securities, real estate 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 branch of the Italian group. UniCredit said earlier in May that the seizure only affected part of the Russian unit’s assets, not the entire subsidiary.
Following the asset seizure, UniCredit’s Russian unit agreed with RusChemAlliance that UniCredit would pledge Russian OFZ Treasury bonds with a market value of approximately 50 billion rubles ($574 million ) in place.
When the gas project was halted, RusChemAlliance had made a 2 billion euro deposit on the 10 billion euro contract, according to the website of the Supreme Court of Great Britain.
UniCredit had issued part of the guarantee in favor of RusChem on behalf of Linde. ($1 = 0.9348 euro) ($1 = 87.1000 rubles) (Elena Fabrichnaya and Alexander Marrow; Elisa Anzolin in Milan and Louise Heavens)
