EAHCISS News (English)

In this post we provide a sixth update on recent Russian court decisions.  Case 6: If you did not apply for 'Forced Conversion' in 2022 you can't ask a Russian court to force Raiffeisenbank to do so now  This case involves Ms Staroseltseva that bought depositary receipts of Polyus in August 2023. She was allowed to do so since Polyus was granted an extension of their depositary receipts program beyond April 2022 by the Russian government committee.  However, as the purchased the depositary receipts beyond the deadline for forced conversion in 2022, she could not participate in the forced conversion.  She therefore decided to start legal proceedings against BNY and Raiffeisenbank Russia in the Russian courts. She was trying to get a Russian court order that would force Raiffeisenbank Russia to take the underlying shares out of the depositary account for the Polyus depositary receipts program and to transfer these ordinary shares to her own account.  The Moscow ar...

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...

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...

In this post we provide a fourth update on recent Russian court decisions. Case 4: Who needs a lawyer to claim Rosneft dividends in court...? The fourth case involves mr. Bychkov that held ADR's (depositary receipts) of Rosneft via the Cypriot broker EXT Ltd. and had them successfully converted via forced conversion. Mr. Bychkov then requested Rosneft to pay the unpaid dividends, which was only about 17,000 Rubles. Rosneft refused the request, stating that it wasn't sufficiently proven that mr. Bychkov owned the ADR's at the Rosneft dividends over 2021 that were returned by Raiffeisenbank to Rosneft (in the amount of 6,915,398,471.46 Rubles!!) included the dividends that were due to mr. Bychkov. Mr. Bychkov then went to court himself, without a lawyer. The relatively low claim of 17,000 Rubles would make it economically non-viable to be represented by a lawyer. Mr. Bychkov also didn't attend the hearing, probably due to travelling costs. The court established tha...

In this post we provide a third update on recent Russian court decisions. Case 3: Raiffeisenbank was ordered to pay financial compensation for failing to execute a request for forced conversion The third case involves mr. Nesterenko that held ADR's (depositary receipts) of MTS via Interactive Brokers. Mr. Nesterenko requested Raiffeisenbank forcefully convert of his MTS ADR's. Raiffeisenbank Russia refused the request which a general statement that included various reasons why such a request can be rejected. Mr. Nesterenko considered the rejection to be unlawful and went to court to request compensation from Raiffeisenbank. The court determined that mr. Nesterenko submitted the documents that he could reasonably gather and that Raiffeisen put unreasonable conditions in place. The court also considered that Raiffeisenbank, as a professional bank, has it's own resources to verify the information that was provided. The court decided that Raiffeisenbank had to pay compens...

In this post we provide a second update on recent Russian court decisions. Case 2: Taking western brokers to court in Russia to transfer securities The second case involves the Cypriot company Lafourcad, that was owned by a Russian individual. Lafourcad wanted to transfer 6,360,000 shares of Sberbank from its account with EFG Bank Luxemburg to its account with the Russian broker Renaissance Capital. EFG Bank refused and mentioned sanctions as the reason to refuse the transfer. Lafourcad then sent an application to the competent sanctions authority in Luxemburg to get authorization for the transfer, which was rejected.  Lafourcad then took EFG Bank to court in Russia for refusing the transfer. The Russian custodian for EFG Bank, Rosbank, which held the Sberbank shares for EFG Bank, was also involved in the case a third party.  The Russian court determined that EFG Bank illegally refused to carry out the requested transfer and ordered Rosbank to carry out the transfer. As a re...

In this post we provide a first update on recent Russian court decisions. These court decisions were kindly provided by Irina Sibirina from the legal firm Itlektis.ru . More case law on Sberbank securities will follow soon. Case 1: Forced transfer of Rosneft shares and unpaid Rosneft dividends The first case involves an investor, mr. Gubaev, that bought Rosneft shares via the Swiss CBH Bank (the case materials speak in one section about directly buying ordinary shares but refer to converted depositary shares in another section). He applied to get his ordinary shares forcefully transferred from CBH Bank to his Russian brokerage account with ATON. According to the court materials, the chain of custody involved The Belgian Branch of Bank of New York Mellon and Citibank Russia. The Russian appellate court ruled in October 2023 that Citibank Russia had wrongfully denied the request for a forced transfer and ordered Citibank Russia to carry out the forced transfer. The full case materials ...