Cassation court upholds anti-suit injunction for UniCredit Bank
The Arbitrazh Court of the North-Western District has rejected the cassation appeal filed by UniCredit Bank GmbH (the German subsidiary of Italy’s UniCredit Group), which was contesting an injunction on continuing legal proceedings abroad against RusKhimAlyans (RKA, a Gazprom joint venture with Rusgazdobycha). The ruling was published on 4 April.
The cassation court upheld the ruling of the Arbitrazh Court of Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad Region dated 28 December 2024, which prohibited UniCredit Bank from:
In the same ruling, the court also ordered UniCredit Bank GmbH to take all measures within its power, within two weeks, to seek the annulment of the anti-suit injunction issued by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales on 29 January 2024 against RKA. Failure to comply would result in a penalty of EUR 250 million. This requirement was met: the Court of Appeal of England and Wales lifted the anti-suit injunction at the bank’s request.
RusKhimAlyans and German chemical company Linde signed a contract in 2021 to build a gas processing plant in Ust-Luga, Leningrad Region. RKA paid Linde a EUR 2 billion advance, but in May 2022, Linde suspended work citing EU sanctions. The guarantee banks (UniCredit and four other German financial institutions) refused to return the funds, also citing sanctions. As part of the guarantee, UniCredit had issued bonds worth EUR 453 million in RKA’s favour, which RKA demanded be redeemed after the contract was terminated. The bonds were governed by English law and stipulated arbitration in Paris. RKA invoked Article 248.1 of Russia’s Arbitrazh Procedure Code, which grants Russian arbitrazh courts exclusive jurisdiction over disputes involving sanctioned Russian parties, even where the parties have contractually agreed to resolve disputes in a foreign court or arbitration, if such agreement becomes “unenforceable” due to sanctions.
In summer 2024, a Russian court ruled to recover EUR 463 million from UniCredit (the guarantee amount plus interest), and ordered the seizure of the bank’s corresponding assets in Russia, including securities. Both the appellate and cassation courts upheld the decision.