ST. PETERSBURG, January 10. /TASS/. The 13th Arbitration Court of Appeal upheld the decision made by the first instance court regarding the lawsuit Admiralty Shipyards had filed against the Finnish company Wartsila Solutions Oy in September.
"[The court rules to] leave the court’s decision unchanged and the complaint without satisfaction," according to the case files.
Under to the first instance court decision, the defendant must pay the St. Petersburg plant a 2.37 million euros debt, as follows from the information published in the file of arbitration cases.
Admiralty Shipyards filed a lawsuit against Wartsila in December 2022. The Russian company sought to recover advance payments from the defendant under two contracts for the supply of equipment for four fishing trawlers of the ST-192 project.
The contracts were concluded in September 2021. In November and December of 2021, the plaintiff transferred advances totaling 2.37 million euros to the Finnish side, but already in March 2022, Wartsila unilaterally suspended the fulfillment of obligations under both contracts due to sanctions imposed by the EU authorities against Russia after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine.
Three months later, Admiralty Shipyards terminated both unfulfilled contracts, and in September 2022 the company demanded that Wartsila should pay back the money, which the defendant never did.
When concluding the agreements, the parties determined that their disputes were subject to resolution by the court in Geneva. However, in September 2023, the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region accepted the lawsuit of Admiralty Shipyards and fully satisfied it considering that Switzerland supported the EU sanctions and thus created conditions for limiting the Russian company’s access to justice on its territory.
Admiralty Shipyards JSC is part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC).
Disputes between USC enterprises and Wartsila
Alongside with Admiralty Shipyards, other USC enterprises are also engaged in litigation with the Finnish Concern - in particular, the St. Petersburg-based Baltic Shipyard and Severnaya Verf (Northern Shipyard). Baltic Plant filed two lawsuits against Wartsila: the company tried to return the money paid for equipment for the icebreakers Yakutia and Chukotka (under construction), which the defendant only partially supplied. The arbitration fully upheld one claim for 5.1 million euros last spring (the defendant was unable to appeal it either in the appellate or cassation instances), and stopped the proceedings on the second claim for 7.6 million euros, citing the arbitration clause in the contracts, in which the parties agreed to consider disputes at the International Chamber of Commerce of Finland. The Baltic Plant managed to appeal this decision in August - the appeal court sent the case for review.
Severnaya Verf (Northern Shipyard) is also trying to recover the overpaid advance payment of 3.8 million euros from Wartsila. In August, the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region accepted the application for consideration. The first hearing in the case is scheduled for February 2024.