MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/. The 13th Arbitration Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal of Germany's Deutsche Bank against the decision to recover more than 238 million euros on the claim of RusChemAlliance, according to the court files.

"To leave the court's decision unchanged, to dismiss the complaint," the court's decision says.

Earlier, the court ruled to recover 238.1 million euros from Deutsche Bank in guarantee payments and 479,510 euros in penalties on RusChemAlliance’s claim.

The court also replaced the interim measures on the claim, removing the seizure of property, accounts and securities of Deutsche Bank, and seizing the funds in the accounts of Deutsche Bank LLC in the amount of 238.6 million euros or their equivalent in rubles.

RusChemAlliance is the operator of the project to build a gas processing and liquefaction complex in Ust-Luga, Leningrad region.

On RusChemAlliance-Linde dispute

In May and June 2022, Linde notified RusChemAlliance about the suspension of work under the contract (it acted as an EPC contractor and supplied part of the equipment as part of the implementation of the complex in Ust-Luga) due to sanctions imposed by the EU.

The Russian company did not agree with this position, saying that the sanctions do not cover work under the contract. In particular, EU sanctions only prohibit the supply of equipment for liquefying natural gas, but not equipment for gas processing and the construction of a gas processing plant.

Since work on Linde’s part did not resume, RusChemAlliance terminated the contract with the German company and sent it a claim regarding the existence of a dispute. At the same time, a number of banks were also unable to fulfill their obligations to RusChemAlliance and pay bank guarantees due to sanctions. After that, RusChemAlliance managed to recover a total of more than 1.1 billion euros from Unicredit Bank AG, Bayerische Landesbank, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg.

Later, the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region fully satisfied the claim of RusChemAlliance against Linde and its structures for a total amount of about 113 billion rubles ($1.26 bln). The court also turned Linde's shares in its subsidiaries in favor of RusChemAlliance.

The dispute concerned the collection of debt from Linde under a contract for the design, procurement and construction of a gas processing plant in Ust-Luga. The court also partially satisfied the claim of RusChemAlliance to prohibit Linde from initiating and continuing legal proceedings abroad.

In March, RusChemAlliance also filed another lawsuit against Germany's Linde for 105.5 billion rubles ($1.2 bln). In July, RusChemAlliance filed a lawsuit against Linde's American subsidiaries, Linde Inc. and Linde Gas & Equipment Inc.