Austrian court orders Rasperia to pay Raiffeisen and Raiffeisenbank 3.15 billion euros
The Vienna Regional Civil Court ruled on 22 September, in the absence of the Russian defendant Rasperia Trading Limited (Kaliningrad), that it must pay 3.15 billion euros to the Austrian banking group Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) and its Russian subsidiary Raiffeisenbank, RBI's press office said. If Rasperia does not appeal within four weeks, the verdict will come into force.
In that case RBI will ask the Austrian sanctions regulator, the Financial Market Authority (FMA), for permission to enforce the judgment against Rasperia's assets, which are frozen in Austria because of EU sanctions on the company. They consist of 28.5 million shares in the Austrian construction group Strabag, dividends the group has not paid to Rasperia since 2021, and cash due to be distributed following Strabag's reduction of its share capital in March 2024.
RBI says its attempt to recover against Rasperia's assets in Austria is a response to damage inflicted on the group in Russia.
In September 2025 the Kaliningrad Region Arbitration Court, a state commercial court, seized Raiffeisenbank's shares as security for a claim by Rasperia Trading Limited. Rasperia had sued ten defendants, including Raiffeisenbank and Strabag, alleging that its representatives had been removed from Strabag's management, its stake diluted and its dividends withheld.
In August 2024 Rasperia filed a claim for 195 billion rubles against Strabag's core shareholders. In January 2025 a Russian court ruled in that case that the defendants should pay 2.044 billion euros. The money was recovered through the forced seizure of Raiffeisenbank's assets. The court ordered the bank to pay that sum and, in return, to take onto its balance sheet an equivalent volume of Strabag shares (28.5 million, or 24.1 % of the capital).
The 2.04 billion euros was the estimated damage Rasperia suffered when a deal to buy its stake in Strabag collapsed. The deal was announced in 2023. Raiffeisenbank was to buy the shares for 1.51 billion euros and transfer them to its Austrian parent, but in May 2024 RBI abandoned the plan, saying it had not received assurances from regulators that the deal would not breach the sanctions regime.
Rasperia was previously linked to Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, who is under US and EU sanctions. Raiffeisenbank is the largest European bank to retain a presence in Russia.
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14.10.26