Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has filed a €3.15 billion ($3.58 billion) lawsuit in Austria against Rasperia, a Russian company currently under European Union sanctions.
The legal action, announced Thursday, marks a significant escalation in the Austrian lender's efforts to recover funds it claims were unlawfully seized by Russian authorities following the imposition of sanctions on its Russian subsidiary.
The case was lodged at the Regional Civil Court in Vienna, seeking to overturn a prior ruling by a Moscow arbitration court that ordered the transfer of RBI's assets to Rasperia.
This move represents a direct challenge to the enforcement of Russian judicial decisions within the European Union, testing the limits of cross-border legal recourse amid ongoing geopolitical tensions.
RBI's lawsuit is part of a broader pattern of legal confrontations between Western financial institutions and Russian entities over frozen assets.
Euroclear, the Belgian securities depository, has similarly filed a lawsuit in Belgium against the Bank of Russia.