RusChemAlliance sued 5 European banks for the aborted gas project

Russian company RusChemAlliance has filed new lawsuits against five European banks that stopped financing the construction of a gas project in Russia after the West imposed sanctions against Moscow following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The lawsuits, all filed at the Arbitration Court in St. Petersburg on September 16, were addressed to Italian bank UniCredit and German lenders Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Bayerische Landesbank and Landesbank BadenWurttemberg, without further details.

RusChemAlliance and Commerzbank declined to comment. The other banks did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

RusChemAlliance, a joint venture 50% owned by Russian gas producer Gazprom, filed several other lawsuits against European banks after German industrial gas company Linde stopped work on a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the Baltic port Ust-Luga in 2022.

The St. Petersburg court froze some of Linde’s assets in Russia and ordered some of its assets outside Russia to be frozen as well, as it tries to recoup funds lost due to the sudden halt in construction of the gas processing plant.

The same court previously ordered all five banks to pay damages.

(Reporting by Alexander Marrow in London and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Additional reporting by Tom Sims and Valentina Za; Editing by Jason Neely)

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