Moscow Arbitration Court has frozen 750,000 shares in Aeroflot (SU, Moscow Sheremetyevo) held by Goldman Sachs after the state-owned commercial bank Otkritie filed a lawsuit against the American financial services firm, online court records show.
Otkritie accused the investment bank of refusing to fulfil RUB614,742,526 rubles (USD6.4 million) of debt obligations under derivatives deals between the two banks, while Goldman Sachs had “referred to the imposition of sanctions against the plaintiff” by the United States and the United Kingdom as the reason for it not being able to settle the debt.
According to the court documents, the Russian bank had additionally submitted copies of Russian and Western media reports as evidence that “indicates that the defendants, who are part of a large American conglomerate, Goldman Sachs Group, are taking actions aimed at terminating their activities in Russia.”
This means that “failure to take the requested interim measures may make it difficult or impossible to enforce the judicial act if the claim is satisfied,” if the defendant’s property is absent in Russia and it is impossible to enforce the decision in “unfriendly states,” the records said.
Besides the shares in Aeroflot, the temporarily frozen assets include a 5% stake in Russia’s biggest children’s goods retailer Detsky Mir, which according to The Financial Times is worth USD27 million based on the latest share price.
The court also saw it fit to seize hundreds of thousands of shares held by Luxembourg-registered subsidiary Goldman Sachs III SICAV in Sberbank, VTB Bank, Gazprom, Lukoil, Tatneft, and food retailer Magnit. The Aeroflot shares are also owned by this European Goldman fund. These assets are worth about USD9.3 million based on their current share prices, The Financial Times estimated.
Goldman Sachs has declined to comment to Western media on the court’s decision.
