EAHCISS News (English)

Exante, a Cyprus based EU broker, informed clients that they effectively consider Russian shares to be frozen under sanctions. Clients were given the option to write off these shares completely and receive a tax credit (if applicable) or to continue holding these shares for a daily fee of € 25.  EAHCISS considers the information provided by Exante to be factually incorrect and urged Exante to retract the information sent to its clients. The full response of EAHCISS can be read here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oFLBfX8pL44A3sGrBHs-28vXl_nicUja/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oFLBfX8pL44A3sGrBHs-28vXl_nicUja/view?usp=sharing

On the 18th of July 2025 the Council of the European Union introduced a transaction ban with many Russian financial institutions, including Sberbank. EAHCISS is concerned about the impact this transaction ban may have on European investors that cannot avoid transactions with these Russian financial institutions due to (automatic) dividend or interest payments. Today we sent a letter to the Council of the European Union and the responsible department within the European Commission (Directorate-General FISMA) to express our concerns. The full letter can be read via this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/140ybZCyVZLWnwDPhg32ad09VVpvFMPqT/view?usp=sharing

In this post we provide a sixth update on recent Russian court decisions.  Case 6: Forced conversion in 2025 as a result of an unjustified rejection of the request for forced conversion in 2022 The sixth case involves US citizen mr. Zlatin who owned 20,000 ADR's (depositary receipts) of Sberbank via the broker HilltopSecurities. Hilltop refused to carry out a request for standard conversion.  Mr. Zlatin therefore applied for forced conversion. Raiffeisenbank rejected this request because the documents did not meet the standards set by Raiffeisenbank to execute the request for forced conversion. Mr. Zlatin then went to court in Moscow. He filed his claim relatively late in April 2024. When the case came to an end at the end of 2024 the first rulings from the Supreme Court started to come back in other cases. The ruling by the Supreme Court in those other cases that stated that Raiffeisenbank had unjustly set unreasonable standards for forced conversion and forced transfer. This...

Investors that have their funds locked up in Russian type-C accounts are sometimes looking into moving to Russia in order to unlock these funds. Timur Beslangurov from VISTA Immigration made a recent video about this topic. He also assists some members of EAHCISS with the process of obtaining a permanent residence permit.  The video with his contact details can be viewed here (please be advised that there is a minor error in the video; the required level of Russian is B1 instead of B2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWP07Qk2dX8

In this post we provide a fifth update on recent Russian court decisions.  Case 5: Forced conversion in 2025 as a result of an unjustified rejection of the request for forced conversion in 2022 The fifth case involves mr. Pelevin who owned GDR's and ADR's (depositary receipts) of NLMK (8,600 GDR's) and Surgutneftegas (17,469 ADR's that represented preferred shares) via the broker Citibank NA London. Citibank NA London refused to carry out a request for standard conversion.  Mr. Pelevin therefore applied for forced conversion. Raiffeisenbank rejected this request because the documents did not meet the standards set by Raiffeisenbank to execute the request for forced conversion. Mr. Pelevin then went to court and lost the initial cases. Eventually the Russian Supreme Court ruled in favour of mr. Pelevin and ordered that Moscow court had to reconsider the case.  On 4th of June 2025 the full judgement from the court of Moscow became available. The court ruled in favour of m...

Subject to approvals by the General Meeting, which will be held on 29 July 2025, the Solidcore will conduct a final exchange offer for shares administered in Russia infrastructure with Euroclear in the chain of custody and establish a framework which will allow the Solidcore to execute a mandatory buyback of all shares which continue to be held in Euroclear at US$ 2.57 per share. Persons holding their shares in Euroclear through non-sanctioned broker(s) or depositories outside of Russia and who have not yet transferred them to AIX (Astana International Exhibition) are urged by Solidcore to do so no later than 31 October 2025 to prevent being subjected to a mandatory buyback. European shareholders may consider opening an account with Freedom Finance, the Kazakh Halyk Bank, or other brokers with AIX access in order to transfer their shares to AIX infrastructure. Shareholders holding their shares through the National Settlement Depository (NSD) or indirectly under Euroclear through other ...

EAHCISS will physically attend the extraordinary general meeting of the O'key group in Luxembourg on Friday the 18th of July (https://okeygroup.lu/investors/shareholders/general-meetings/). O'key kindly provided a copy of the sale agreement for the O'key hypermarkets after we provided evidence of being a shareholder.  O'key group is planning to undergo redomiciliation to Russia. We are also working on converting depositary receipts of O'key into the underlying Luxembourgish shares, as a preparation for redomiciliation. Luxembourgish ordinary shares in the O'key group will automatically be converted into Russian shares. O'key group depositary receipts can currently be traded on the Astana international exchange (AIX), Moex and over-the-counter (OTC). O'key group depositary receipts that are administrated in the Russian Federation will automatically be converted into ordinary shares after redomiciliation. Depositary shares that are administrated outside th...

On July 1, 2025, Decree 436 of the President of the Russian Federation was published (http://actual.pravo.gov.ru/content/content.html#pnum=0001202507010017), which establishes guarantees for new investments by foreign residents in the Russian Federation. The Decree provides for the possibility of foreign investors, including unfriendly investors, to acquire the following securities during the initial placement, as well as on the stock exchange (based on non-addressed applications [not over-the-counter]): - Shares of Russian legal entities - OFZ - Bonds of Russian issuers - Investment units of Russian mutual investment funds The provisions of the Decree also establish the possibility for foreign investors to receive income on such securities (and subsequently withdraw them outside the Russian Federation in foreign currency), as well as to conclude agreements that are derivative financial instruments and place deposits in Russian credit institutions. The specified operations with funds ...