Arbitration arrested Linde assets in Russia for 35 billion rubles.

The estimated value of the seized assets is half the losses claimed by Linde from non-fulfillment of obligations for the construction of a gas processing plant

The Arbitration COURT of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region arrested the Russian assets of the transnational chemical company Linde in the amount of 35 billion rubles, follows from the card of the arbitration case published on the website of the court. We are talking about Linde GmbH from Germany and its parent company Linde PLC, registered in Ireland.

One of the operators of the construction of the ethane-containing gas processing complex in Ust-Luga, the RusKhimAlliance company, which is a joint venture between Gazprom and RusGazDobycha, filed a lawsuit. it initiated international arbitration proceedings in connection with Linde's failure to fulfill its obligations to build a gas processing plant.

Under the terms of the contract, RusKhimAlliance will apply to the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center with a claim against Linde.

“The price of the claim of RusKhimAlliance against the Respondents, as mentioned above, will be 946,543,608 euros of the unworked advance and 25,758,246 euros, 7,609,185,412 rubles. losses. At the same time, the total value of the property, for which the Applicant asks for attachment, is 35,005,393,246 rubles, which is two times less than the requirements for the Defendants, ”says the court ruling on interim measures dated December 30, 2022.

Experts estimate the losses of companies that left RUSSIA at $240 billion Economics

At the same time, RusKhimAlliance, within 15 working days from the date of the decision on interim measures, must begin to carry out the pre-trial procedure for resolving the dispute with Linde, namely: send a notification about sending the dispute for consideration by top management. After another 45 days and 5 business days, a notice of arbitration must be sent to the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center.

The seat of the dispute is Hong Kong, the place of hearing is Stockholm, Sweden.

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RBC sent requests to RusKhimAlliance and Linde.

In March 2022, the Linde Group announced the termination of new projects in Russia. The company's management said that it would continue to fulfill the requirements of already signed contracts, if this would not contradict the sanctions imposed against Russia.

In June, Linde withdrew from a joint venture manufacturing spiral-wound cryogenic heat exchangers for the gas processing industry and LNG in Russia. This joint venture was established in 2017. First, the Russian partner was Power Machines, which was later replaced by Severstal. In April, the share of Severstal (50%) was transferred to RusKhimAlliance, then the company became the sole owner of the enterprise.

In July, the Linde Group released a statement saying it was no longer able to control its subsidiaries in Russia due to sanctions against Moscow. “Linde has reassessed its ability to control its Russian subsidiaries and has determined that as of June 30, 2022, it can no longer exercise control over these entities,” the statement said.

The company then specified that on June 30 they “deconsolidated” their Russian gas and engineering plants. Because of this, the company suffered a loss of $993 million in April-June.