Raiffeisen Bank asks EU to unfreeze Russian Rasperia's stake in Strabag
Austrian banking group Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has asked the European Union to lift sanctions restrictions on the assets of Russian company Rasperia Trading IJSC, Bloomberg news agency reports, citing RBI head Johann Strobl. RBI wants the stake in Austrian construction concern Strabag that is owned by Rasperia but cannot be transferred due to sanctions.
According to Bloomberg, Austria is delaying the 19th package of sanctions against Russia because of the Rasperia situation. In Russia, Raiffeisenbank (a subsidiary of RBI) has been charged €2.1bn due to the failure of the Strabag share sale deal, and RBI will be able to make up for this amount if it gets the stake in Strabag.
"Rasperia is sitting on Strabag shares and €2.1bn is already in Russia," Strobl told reporters on 8 October, referring to the situation in which Rasperia both received Raiffeisenbank's money and retains a stake in Strabag. "There is a way to change that," he said.
The market value of the 28.5 million Strabag shares held by Rasperia is €2.38bn as of 10 October.
In early October, the Financial Times reported that the EU would discuss the possibility of unfreezing the Strabag shares owned by Rasperia. At the same time, the newspaper said that some European officials fear that such a decision would support the approach of Russian courts, which seize the assets of foreign companies in response to Western sanctions.
In early 2025, the Arbitrazh (Commercial) Court of the Kaliningrad Region granted Rasperia's claim and ordered Raiffeisenbank to pay Rasperia €2.044bn. These were the damages incurred by Rasperia when the deal to buy its stake in Strabag fell through. The deal had been announced in 2023. Raiffeisenbank was supposed to buy the shares for €1.51bn and transfer them to the Austrian parent company, but in May 2024 RBI abandoned these plans - citing the fact that it had not received guarantees from regulators that the deal would not violate the sanctions regime.
Rasperia was previously controlled by Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, who came under EU sanctions in 2022. In March 2024, Strabag reported that Deripaska had ceased to control Rasperia. Nevertheless, the Russian company was separately added to the EU sanctions list in June 2024.
RBI owns "one of the largest foreign banks in Russia," Bloomberg notes. The Austrian group has said it wants to sell the Russian business, but Russian regulators won't allow it. Raiffeisenbank also cannot transfer its profits to the parent company. RBI is still looking for a buyer for Raiffeisenbank. "If the list [of potential buyers] had ended, we would have said so. We are not giving up," Strobl said in October 2025.