MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian court has ordered that the assets, accounts, property and shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank be seized in Russia as part of a lawsuit involving the German banks, according to court documents.
Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank were guarantor lenders in a contract to build a gas processing plant in Russia with German company Linde that was terminated due to Western sanctions.
The complaint was filed by RusChemAlliance, a joint venture based in St. Petersburg, 50% owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom and operator of the project.
The St. Petersburg Arbitration Court banned Deutsche Bank from exercising its 100% stake in the authorized capital of its Russian subsidiary, as well as in the Deutsche Bank Technology Center LLC.
It also imposed the seizure of 238.6 million euros in securities, real estate and bank accounts of Deutsche Bank, as well as its Russian subsidiary and the Deutsche Bank Technology Center.
Deutsche Bank said it had already set aside around 260 million euros for the deal.
“We will have to see how this request will be implemented by Russian courts and assess the immediate operational impact in Russia,” the bank said in a statement.
The court also ordered the seizure of 93.7 million euros of Commerzbank’s assets, as well as the bank’s building in central Moscow.
On Friday, the Russian court ordered the seizure of UniCredit’s assets, accounts and property, as well as the shares of two subsidiaries, in parallel proceedings.
(Reuters bureau, with Tom Sims in Frankfurt, Benjamin Mallet and Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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