UniCredit gets court to overturn its own UK injunction against Gazprom unit

LONDON (Reuters) -UniCredit on Tuesday won a bid in a London court to overturn an injunction the Italian bank obtained against a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, in the face of a potential 250 million euro fine in Russia.

The highly unusual move underlines the issues UniCredit has faced over its operations in Russia, where it is the second biggest Western bank still operating after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

A spokesperson for UniCredit, in response to a request for comment on Tuesday's ruling, referred to the bank's 2024 results which referred to "full coverage" for the case.

Gazprom unit RusKhimAlyans – also referred to in court documents as RusChemAlliance – had launched a flurry of lawsuits in Russia after Western sanctions halted work on a liquefied natural gas plant at the Baltic port of Ust-Luga in 2022.

The company, which is 50% owned by Gazprom, sued UniCredit in August 2023 after the bank refused to pay bank guarantees linked to the project, citing Western sanctions.

UniCredit obtained an anti-suit injunction in London, preventing RusKhimAlyans from pursuing its case in Russia, which was upheld by the UK Supreme Court last year.

But UniCredit asked London's Court of Appeal to overturn that order after RusKhimAlyans had obtained its own anti-suit injunction in Russia, exposing the bank to a potential fine in Russia.

The bank's lawyers argued that its exposure in Russia was as much as 710 million euros ($733 million), comprising RusKhimAlyans' 460 million-euro claim and the 250 million-euro fine it faced if it did not try to discharge its own injunction.

They also said Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, which had obtained orders to stop RusKhimAlyans suing in Russia, had also taken steps to overturn their own injunctions in England.

Judge Geoffrey Vos said in a written ruling that "UniCredit has undoubtedly been coerced into making this application", but the bank had decided it was in its commercial interests.

UniCredit is separately fighting a European Central Bank order to scale back its presence in Russia and suffered an early setback in that case in November.

($1 = 0.9691 euros)

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar and Tomasz Janowski)