The Swedish Court of Appeals upheld its ban on compulsory enforcement of the Stockholm Arbitration Award for recovery of $ 2.6 billion from Gazprom in the dispute with Naftogaz. The ban was made two weeks ago, and the Ukrainian company tried to challenge it urgently, but did not succeed. Now Naftogaz is trying to arrest various assets of Gazprom in Europe within the limits of recovery - now it will become more difficult for him to do it.

The Svea County Court of Appeals (Stockholm) upheld the ban issued in early June for the forcible collection of $ 2.6 billion from Gazprom, which the company must pay to Naftogaz in accordance with the decisions of the Stockholm Arbitration. This is stated in the message of Gazprom.

"Today, the Court of Appeal of Svea County (Sweden) decided to keep its order of June 13, 2018 to suspend the enforcement of the Stockholm Arbitration Award of February 28, 2018 between Gazprom and Naftogaz of Ukraine under a contract for the transit of gas through the territory of Ukraine, the message says. "Naftogaz of Ukraine" tried to appeal this order, but the court found its arguments insolvent. This circumstance strengthens the position of Gazprom in appealing against Naftogaz Ukrainy's attempts to enforce the said arbitration award in various countries. "
Gazprom disputes these decisions in an appeal and does not want to pay money until it receives a verdict of the appellate instance - it may take 1.5-2 years.

Representatives of the Russian company explained that they are not sure that if Gazprom wins the appeal, Naftogaz will return the money paid. Naftogaz does not want to wait for the appeal decision and risk the revision of the arbitration decision, so in May it began arresting Gazprom's assets in Europe - shares of the subsidiaries of the Russian company in Switzerland (shares of Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG), the Netherlands and Great Britain.

However, the decision of the Swedish Court of Appeal in fact does not allow Naftogaz to collect frozen assets (that is, sell them or get them into their property). On June 18, Naftogaz reported that it appealed the decision of the Court of Appeal on the ban on recovery as a matter of urgency. However, as it became known on Thursday, June 28, the court did not satisfy the petition.

In fact, this decision of the court means that Gazprom, apparently, can painlessly not pay $ 2.6 billion to Naftogaz for as long as there is no appeal. At the same time, the amount of payment is charged daily at a rate of 0.03% of the total, or about $ 280 million per year.