The background is a dispute with a subsidiary of the gas giant Gazprom.
16:19•Updated 16:21
Russia has seized the assets of the German Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank and the Italian UniCredit bank for a total of more than 700 million euros, says Financial Times and news agency AFP.
The confiscation decisions of the St. Petersburg court are one of Russia’s fiercest attacks against Western banks since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Assets worth EUR 239 million were seized from Deutsche Bank. The 463 million euros confiscated from UniCredit corresponds to approximately four and a half percent of UniCredit’s holdings in Russia.
According to the Financial Times, the figures of Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest bank, have not yet been specified, but the court has demanded that almost 95 million euros be confiscated from it.
UniCredit is Italy’s second largest and one of the largest European banks still operating in Russia. It employs around 3,000 people in the country.
The bank’s CEO Andrea Orcel recently said that withdrawing from Russia would be “complicated”. Negotiations on withdrawal have been ongoing, but have not progressed.
The reason behind the confiscation decisions is a dispute with a subsidiary of the gas giant Gazprom.