Ukraine's Naftogaz elaborates on status of recovery of US$3 bln from Russia's Gazprom

Yuriy Vitrenko, the Executive Director of National Joint Stock Company (NJSC) Naftogaz of Ukraine, says he expects that the process of recovering debt from Russia's gas giant Gazprom in the amount of about US$3 billion from the sale of seized assets will be fully completed at the end of next year. "My forecast is that by the end of 2020 we will recover the entire amount, that is about US$3 billion [the US$2.6 billion debt plus interest]. We will start in the middle of 2020 and end the recovery by the end of 2020," he told the Ekonomichna Pravda online newspaper in an interview. Vitrenko explained that Gazprom's assets in the UK and the Netherlands had already been seized. There are certain restrictive measures in Luxembourg and Switzerland, but they cannot be considered the seizure of assets as Gazprom has no assets in those countries, and as soon as they appear there, they will be frozen.

"In England, the legislation is structured so that if frozen assets are commensurate with the amount of debt, then the courts are awaiting a decision of a court of appeals. In Holland, one can sell assets before the appeal, but there Gazprom used every trick in the book: they stated that they had not received notification of the beginning of the process," he said.

According to Vitrenko, the process was thus delayed and hearings on it would only take place in December. "After that, we expect that by the middle of 2020, compulsory debt recovery will begin – they will start selling assets in the Netherlands," he added. As UNIAN reported earlier, Gazprom late in February 2018 lost a lawsuit against Naftogaz in the Stockholm arbitration on a transit contract, according to which the Russian company must pay the Ukrainian side $4.6 billion. At the same time, taking into account the decision of the arbitration on the gas supply contract, final amount of settlements between the companies amounts to $2.6 billion in favor of Naftogaz. Against the background of the defeat, Gazprom announced their intention to terminate in court the contract with Ukraine for the supply and transit of gas. On March 20, Gazprom officially notified Naftogaz that it refuses to execute the arbitration decision. In late May, Naftogaz began the process of forced collection from Gazprom of a $2.6 billion debt in foreign courts.