Entrepreneur Mikhail Fridman has filed a $16 billion lawsuit against Luxembourg in the Hong Kong Arbitration Court. He is opposing the freezing of assets in various countries that he owns through Luxembourg holding companies, Vedomosti reports.
The lawsuit qualifies the freezing of these assets in accordance with the sanctions imposed by the European Union as illegal expropriation. The document claims that the only reasons for the sanctions are the Russian origin of the founder of Alfa Group and his business successes.
According to the lawsuit, the sanctions, which were imposed in circumvention of the UN, violate international law. The amount specified in the lawsuit corresponds to the value of his frozen assets and does not include compensation for moral damages, the amount of which will be determined later.
The legal basis for the claim, according to Friedman’s lawyers, is the 1989 agreement between Luxembourg and the USSR, whose legal successor was Russia. According to the agreement, capital investments of investors of one contracting party in the territory of the other cannot be expropriated and nationalized, except in specially stipulated cases.