The Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region (Russia) satisfied the claim of VTB Bank against The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (USA).
According to the court decision, The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation must recover losses from VTB in rubles at the exchange rate of the Central Bank of Russia, in the amount of 14,644,029.39 USD, of which 14.309.476.95 is real damage and 334.552.44 is lost profit.
The court documents say that the account of VTB was opened with The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, but on February 24th, 2022 VTB was added to US sanctions, on February 28th to UK sanctions and in April to EU sanctions.
According to a press release from the US Treasury Department, the imposition of sanctions on VTB Bank was motivated by the fact that it is owned by the government of the Russian Federation and considered a systemically important financial institution. These sanctions will cut off one of the most important arteries of the Russian financial system and freeze assets held in US financial institutions, making them inaccessible to the Kremlin.
After these sanctions were imposed, The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation transferred $14 million from VTB’s account to a special account at the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Suspense Account. VTB demanded the return of the money but did not receive a response, so it appealed to an arbitration court in Russia for assistance.
The Russian court concluded that VTB Bank, as a person included on the US SDN list, had been “deliberately denied the opportunity to access its funds in the United States through OFAC, as decisions on unblocking were made by OFAC on political grounds without due process.”
