Russian court orders freezing of Linde UK’s assets worth $1.2 billion

A Russian court has ordered about $1.15 billion worth of assets of a British subsidiary of German industrial gases company Linde to be frozen in a dispute over a gas processing plant, court filings showed on Wednesday .

RusChemAlliance, which brought the suit, is a joint venture owned 50% by the Russian company Gazprom. RusChemAlliance filed several other lawsuits against European banks over the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with Germany’s Linde, which was terminated due to Western sanctions.

RusChemAlliance asked the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region to impose provisional measures by freezing the assets belonging to the subsidiary, Linde Russia UK Limited, in the amount of 746 million euros ($820.7 million) and 30.7 billion rubles ($333.3 million).

Linde did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiff argued that the asset freeze was necessary because Western sanctions would make it impossible to enforce a future court judgment in a jurisdiction that Russia considers “unfriendly” and that Linde was trying to withdraw its assets from Russian territory, the filings show.

RusChemAlliance also argued that the Linde companies did not have enough assets in Russia to enforce a court order.

In January 2023, the same court ordered the freezing of nearly $500 million of Linde’s assets.

The court granted RusChemAlliance’s request, ordering that the British subsidiary’s claim rights to several gas plants on the territory of Russia be frozen, as well as funds in the company’s bank accounts, securities and real estate.

In 2021, Linde and Renaissance Heavy Industries signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract with Gazprom and its partners for the Ust-Luga gas complex.

Linde notified the customer in May and June 2022 that it had suspended work under the contract due to European Union sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

RusChemAlliance argued that the EU sanctions prohibit the supply of equipment for the LNG plant, but do not cover equipment needed for the other part of the Ust-Luga complex – a gas processing plant.

(1 USD = 92.1000 rubles)

(1 USD = 0.9090 euros)

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Mark Potter)

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