The construction of a gas terminal in Russia fell through because of Western sanctions. A court has now seized the assets of several banks that were involved in the deal – including Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.
The Russian judiciary has ordered the confiscation of assets of several Western European banks. Those affected include Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.
As documents from the court in St. Petersburg show, up to 238 million euros in securities, real estate and assets of the credit institution and its Russian subsidiary are affected at Deutsche Bank. At Commerzbank it is about assets with a volume of 93.7 million euros as well as securities and the bank’s building in the center of Moscow.
Italian UniCredit was also affected
The background is the originally planned construction of a gas processing plant by the Linde Group in the Russian Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga west of St. Petersburg. Both institutes wanted to participate in the financing of the system. Linde’s client was the company RusChemAlliance, half of which is owned by the Russian state-owned Gazprom Group. Linde had given up work on the project because of Western sanctions against Russia.
In addition to the two major German banks, the Italian UniCredit is also affected – one of the European banks most heavily involved in Russia before the Ukraine war. Here the judges had assets and property worth around 463 million euros confiscated.
Sanctions retaliation
Deutsche Bank said it “remains to be seen how this decision will be implemented by the Russian courts and what consequences this will have for our operations in Russia.” The financial institution therefore sees itself “fully protected by a compensation agreement with a customer”.
UniCredit said in a statement that it was aware of the Russian court’s decision to confiscate the assets in Russia. This must now be examined “in detail”. There is still no statement from Commerzbank.
Russia is increasingly responding with retaliatory measures to sanctions imposed by Western countries because of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Numerous companies had to accept the confiscation or seizure of assets and new managers were appointed to the Russian subsidiaries. Companies that withdraw from Russia sometimes have to sell their businesses to Russian companies at significant discounts. Often only a symbolic ruble is paid.