He is on the list of 1,706 Russians affected by the fourteen packages of European sanctions that have targeted Moscow since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Mikhail Maratovich Fridman, co-shareholder of Alfa Group and holder of a fortune estimated at at least 11.3 billion euros, however, benefited, on April 10, from a favorable judgment from the General Court of the European Union. The judges considered that it could not be demonstrated that he had supported the decision-makers responsible for the war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.
With this ruling, the oligarch, presented by the European Council as a close friend of President Vladimir Putin, now intends to move on to the next stage: he is demanding from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which validated and applied the European sanctions, the restitution of all his assets, as well as financial compensation for the “irreversible and catastrophic damage” suffered by its activity. A total of 16 billion dollars (14.5 billion euros).
Revealed on August 14 by the Brussels site EUobserver.comthe information is confirmed in Luxembourg. Questioned by The Worldthe office of Prime Minister Luc Frieden gave a laconic response: “Mr. Mikhail Fridman has initiated arbitration proceedings, the government is analyzing the request and the next steps with its legal advisers.”
The Russian billionaire had, since the beginning of the 2000s, made Luxembourg the capital of his empire by virtue of “its very good reputation for asset protection”his advisers indicate in an arbitration proposal “honest and impartial” in Hong Kong.
Support for the war against Ukraine
Assisted by a battery of lawyers, including those from Omnia Strategy, the company headed in London by Cherie Blair, the wife of the former Labour Prime Minister, and, in Paris, by the Kiejman-Marembert firm, the head of Alfa (banking and insurance), also an investor in telephony, energy and water treatment, is demanding that the dispute be settled under the rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). This body, created in 1966, aims to harmonize and unify international trade law.
The case is obviously embarrassing for the grand duchy, whose gross domestic product was 79.3 billion in 2023. Mr Fridman's advisers argue that Luxembourg has violated the guarantees offered by a bilateral agreement concluded in 1989 with Moscow and also protecting its investments in a series of other countries: the United Kingdom – where the businessman lives in a mansion and where he created the investment fund LetterOne -, Ukraine, where he was born, as well as Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.
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Source: Lemonde
