According to Bloomberg, for many of the richest Russian businessmen, assets have already been frozen in the West for more than one year, and their movements are largely limited to the Middle East and Asia. The agency’s survey among billionaires and people from their inner circle showed that they view the Usmanov and Fridman cases as tied to specific circumstances.
At least two Bloomberg interlocutors said they plan to study Mikhail Fridman’s example closely and expect to use it as a precedent for their own lawsuits. Bloomberg also writes that repeating Alisher Usmanov’s path would be difficult: according to sources, this would require close ties with the authorities of several Central Asian and Caucasian countries, as well as beyond the near abroad; as the agency recalled, managers from Turkey, Slovakia, and the former government of Hungary lobbied for Usmanov.
Sanctions law specialist Sergei Glandin, a partner at the Moscow law firm BGP Litigation, believes that investment arbitration could become an effective way to pressure Western governments into starting negotiations or lifting sanctions restrictions. According to him, the larger the claim amount, the faster this process may go.
Fridman filed a $16 billion lawsuit against Luxembourg, claiming that the freezing of assets in that country violated the investment protection treaty, and demanded compensation for damages. After France came out in defense of Usmanov, Luxembourg said that its position in court would weaken and demanded that Fridman also be removed from the blacklist.
Gregoire Roos, director of programs on Europe, Russia, and Eurasia at the British think tank Chatham House, said that wealthy Russians will study these two cases very closely. According to him, some billionaires met them with black humor, while others fear that the decision on Usmanov and Fridman will complicate the situation for Russian companies that still operate in Europe and trigger retaliatory measures from the EU.
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