Russian court orders Italy's UniCredit to pay $480 million over aborted gas project

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court has ordered Italian bank UniCredit to pay 448.2 million euros ($479.44 million) in a lawsuit over an aborted gas project brought by St Petersburg-based RusChemAlliance, a joint venture 50% owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom.

UniCredit was one of the guarantor lenders under a contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with Germany's Linde, which was terminated due to Western sanctions against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.

"The claim is satisfied in full," the St Petersburg Arbitration Court said in a filing.

UniCredit declined to comment.

The court had ruled in mid May that 462.7 million euros in securities, real estate and accounts belonging to UniCredit, as well as 100% of shares in UniCredit Leasing and UniCredit Garant, be seized.

UniCredit Leasing and UniCredit Garant are subsidiaries of AO UniCredit Bank, the Italian group's Russian arm. UniCredit said earlier in May that the seizure affected only a fraction of the Russian unit's assets, not the entire subsidiary.

Following the asset seizure, UniCredit's Russian unit agreed with RusChemAlliance for UniCredit to pledge Russian OFZ treasury bond holdings with a market value of around 50 billion roubles ($574 million) instead.

When the gas project was halted, RusChemAlliance had made a 2 billion euro advance payment on the 10 billion euro contract, according to Britain's Supreme Court website.

UniCredit had issued part of the guarantee package in favour of RusChem on behalf of Linde.

($1 = 0.9348 euros)

($1 = 87.1000 roubles)

(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya and Alexander Marrow; additional reporting by Elisa Anzolin in Milan and Louise Heavens)