A Russian court froze shares of companies worth around $36 million owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. after Otkritie Bank claimed it refused to honor a swap contract due to sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
(Bloomberg) — A Russian court froze shares of companies worth around $36 million owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. after Otkritie Bank claimed it refused to honor a swap contract due to sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
Moscow Arbitration Court froze 37 million shares of retailer Detsky Mir PJSC owned by Goldman Sachs as well as smaller amounts of shares of major Russian companies including Sberbank PJSC, Gazprom PJSC and Lukoil PJSC that are owned by the Goldman Sachs III SICAV fund. Otkritie argued for the asset freeze, citing Goldman Sachs’s decision to withdraw from Russia.
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In the order dated Aug. 1, the court rejected a request to freeze Goldman Sachs’s stake in its Russian subsidiary or its accounts in other Russian banks.
The total value of the frozen shares far exceeds the 614.7 million rubles ($6.4 million) sought by Otkritie from Goldman Sachs. The US and the UK sanctioned Otkritie, now a unit of Russia’s second-largest VTB Bank PJSC, in February 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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