Moscow court freezes ex-Minister Chubais's assets in Rosnano lawsuit

The Moscow Arbitration Court has frozen the funds and assets of Anatoly Chubais, former Economy Minister Yakov Urinson, and other former managers of the state-owned nanotechnology corporation Rosnano.

Judge Anna Petrukhina made the decision as part of precautionary measures in a lawsuit filed by Rosnano against its former leadership, Caliber.Az reports, citing Russian media.

On December 12, Rosnano filed a claim against its former executives seeking to recover 11.9 billion rubles ($258.5 million) in losses from the Crocus project, which aimed to establish production of magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) in Russia.

The company requested precautionary measures in the form of asset freezes.

“The defendants are not interested in keeping assets in the Russian Federation, and Rosnano has reasonable grounds to believe that the defendants’ assets may be moved abroad shortly after receiving the claim. Considering the size of the claim, the complexity of the facts, and the volume of documents submitted, the trial could take a long time, during which the defendants could dispose of their assets to Rosnano’s detriment,” the court's ruling explains.

The court noted that, in the absence of specific assets being indicated, the request for a freeze is only a presumption of asset existence.

The arbitration court froze Chubais’ assets up to the claimed amount of 11,896,910,244.90 rubles, as well as the assets of Oleg Kiselev, Sergey Kalyuzhny, Andrey Kushnarev, Dmitry Lisenkov, Andrey Malyshev, Andrey Trapeznikov, Dmitry Pimkin, German Pikhoi, Boris Podolsky, Yakov Urinson, Yuri Udaltsov, and Vladimir Avetisyan. Rosnano accuses them of “unreasonable and dishonest actions and inaction” in the MRAM project. The company estimates its damages at €41 million, $35 million, and 5.5 billion rubles [$119.5 million], according to RBC sources.

Chubais’ lawyer, Pavel Khlyustov, declined to comment.

Anatoly Chubais headed Rosnano from 2008 to 2020 and left Russia in March 2022.

By Khagan Isayev