(Reuters) -Russian investment company Rasperia has filed a new lawsuit involving Raiffeisen Bank International's local subsidiary, seeking to prevent any legal proceedings from taking place outside
Rasperia Seeks to Keep Raiffeisenbank Legal Proceedings in Russia
(Reuters) -Russian investment company Rasperia has filed a new lawsuit involving Raiffeisen Bank International's local subsidiary, seeking to prevent any legal proceedings from taking place outside Russia, court filings showed.
RBI has paid more than 2 billion euros ($2.28 billion) in damages in a separate case brought by Rasperia. The transfer of interest was completed last week, a key step in RBI's struggle to gain Russian regulatory clearance for the sale of its subsidiary in the country.
Rasperia named Raiffeisenbank - RBI's Russian subsidiary - and other Russian-based entities connected to Vienna-based construction company Strabag in the new lawsuit, filed on Monday.
The court filings noted that Rasperia was seeking to prohibit the "initiation or continuation of proceedings" in courts outside of Russia.
RBI, Raiffeisenbank, Strabag and Rasperia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Rasperia's lawyer, Igor Ozerskiy of K&P Group, said the new lawsuit was aimed at preventing the defendants from pursuing arbitration proceedings in the Netherlands and was requesting that entities violating the proposed ban be fined 1 billion euros.
Ozerskiy said that Rasperia believes the Russian court decision in the damages case should be unconditionally enforced.
RBI has been under intense pressure from the United States and European regulators to pare its ties to Russia, and is in the process of doing so.
Also on Monday, a different Russian court postponed a decision on whether to lift an order, first imposed in September 2024, banning the sale of RBI's local unit. That decision is now scheduled for June 18, court filings showed.
The bank vowed in late April to fight against Russian court rulings that ordered it to pay damages over a collapsed investment deal that RBI hoped would allow it to unlock some of the billions of euros it has frozen inside Russia.
RBI had sought to buy a stake in Strabag from Rasperia, but pulled out under pressure from Washington.
($1 = 0.8760 euros)
(Reporting by Alexander Marrowand Elena Fabrichnaya; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
