Russian investors demand 200 billion rubles from Euroclear

Russian investors have filed claims against Euroclear totaling more than 200 billion rubles.

In Russian courts, 13 lawsuits were filed against the European depository.

At the Investor Protection Club meeting, the strategy for unlocking assets was discussed.

The Moscow Arbitration Court registered a claim by a private investor against Euroclear, a European depositary, for 91.5 million rubles at the end of last week.

RBC has drawn attention to the fact that the total amount of claims against Euroclear, which blocked the assets of Russian investors, has exceeded 200 billion rubles.

Altogether, 13 legal cases were brought to Russian courts against the European depository, including two class action suits. The most recent lawsuits are some of the biggest in terms of the amount of claims.

In September 2022, Bank Saint-Petersburg filed a lawsuit in the Moscow Arbitration Court, setting a precedent for appeals to Russian arbitration courts. At the end of February, the court ruled in favor of the bank, ordering Euroclear Bank to pay $107.1 million in ruble equivalent.

At a meeting on August 11, the Investor Rights Protection Club discussed a legal protection strategy to unfreeze assets held in the accounts of the National Settlement Depository (NSD) in Belgium and Luxembourg, according to Interfax.

In 2022, Euroclear and Clearstream, two European depositories, blocked the accounts of NSD, resulting in some of the securities of Russian investors being frozen.

The Russian Central Bank has estimated that 6 trillion rubles worth of assets held by NSD in foreign depositories have been blocked.

In the first half of 2023, Euroclear made more than €1.7 billion from investing in blocked Russian assets, as revealed by the clearing house's financial results for the period, which were posted on its website.