The Moscow Arbitration Court has put an end to the dispute between the Russian company Concept Group and the Spanish Nextail Labs SL.
The Concept Group, a company controlled by Sistema Public Joint Stock Financial Corporation (Sistema), owns retail chains of clothing brands Acoola and Concept Club. Nextail Labs SL provides software for upgrading inventory management processes and operations of retailers’ stores.
In 2019, the companies signed an agreement under which Nextail Labs SL provided software for the Concept Group. The Russian company paid for the use of the software, but payments stopped after November 2022. In December 2023, the Spanish company closed Concept Group’s access to its platform.
The companies filed lawsuits against each other. Nextail Labs SL demanded to repay the debt in the amount of 503,650 euros. In turn, the Concept Group asked the court to supplement the agreement with a clause suspending its operation from February 1, 2024, until the lifting of international sanctions that prevent Russian companies from making payments to foreign entities. In addition, the Concept Group wanted to avoid any fines and penalties for the duration of the sanctions against Russian companies.
In court, the Concept Group (according to documents controlled by Sistema and its founder Vladimir Evtushenkov*, who were included in the US sanctions list) stated that it could not transfer payments “due to the complication of the foreign policy situation, which served as the basis for the imposition of sanctions restrictions by the US authorities and states and international organizations that joined them.”
However, in the end, the court sided with the Spanish Nextail Labs SL. The court ordered the collection of a debt of 503,650 euros and a penalty of 50,365 euros from the Concept Group in favor of Nextail Labs SL.
The court’s report says that the sanctions of the European Union, to which the complainant refers, do not prohibit payment in euros in favor of European counterparties. In addition, as it turned out, the Concept Group, without any restrictions, continued to make payments in euros from its Raiffeisenbank account to the Spanish Nextail Labs SL account in 2022, namely: 01.06.2022, 20.06.2022, 21.06.2022, 09.09.2022, 28.11.2022.
* Sistema Public Joint Stock Financial Corporation is a Russian investment company founded in 1993 by Vladimir Yevtushenkov. Forbes estimates Vladir Yevtushenkov’s fortune at $1.7 billion.
