Kyiv court allows the seizure of 6 billion of Gazprom property in Ukraine
The Economic Court of the City of Kyiv satisfied the petition of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) and the State Executive Service of the Ministry of Justice by changing the procedure of the execution of the court decision regarding the recovery of a 172 billion UAH ($6.48 billion) fine from Russia's Gazprom.
"To put it simply, until now, only the funds on Gazprom’s bank accounts could be recovered. Now, the recovery extends to all the debtor’s property,” posted Minister of Justice Pavlo Petrenko on Facebook. The decision must be made public within a few days.
On January 22, 2016, the AMCU fined Gazprom 85.97 billion UAH ($3.24 billion) for abuse of monopoly position in the gas transit market. Gazprom tried to contest the AMCU decision through the courts but its claim was never accepted.
On October 5, 2016, the AMCU appealed to the court with a demand to recover from Gazprom a fine and a surcharge in the total amount of about 172 billion UAH ($ 6.48 billion). In December 2016, AMCU won in court, and the appeal and cassation bodies confirmed the same decision.
The court’s decision on recovery is now at the execution stage. 80 million UAH ($ 3.02 billion) must be paid to Gazprom from the private joint-stock company Gaztransit based in Kyiv.
Gazprom has no other assets in Ukraine except for transit gas. Ukraine has stated that it does not intend to seize Russian transit gas.