OREANDA-NEWS The volume of Alfa-Bank's assets blocked in American banks last year due to the imposition of sanctions is estimated at almost $0.6 billion. Alfa-Bank itself, as well as other Russian credit organizations that found themselves on the sanctions lists, did not publish this figure in its reporting. However, it was disclosed in the materials of the trial with one of the bank's small clients.

In November last year, the Moscow Arbitration Court received a lawsuit from an individual entrepreneur Svetlana Kartunova, who demanded the return of 2.8 million rubles of debt and interest for the illegal retention of funds by Alfa-Bank.

As follows from the materials of the case, Alfa-Bank and Kartunova concluded an agreement on settlement and cash services (RKO), under which dollar accounts were opened. An individual entrepreneur in March last year instructed the bank to buy currency for a total of 2.8 million rubles ($ 28.1 thousand) and transfer this amount to the account of the Vietnamese counterparty Dewberry, for which the bank charged a commission in the total amount of 35.3 thousand rubles. However, to date, the client's orders have not been executed, the funds that were transferred through the correspondent bank of JP Morgan Chase have not been credited to the counterparty's account.

Since April 22 last year, the plaintiff has repeatedly sent applications to the bank to conduct an investigation on outgoing payments with demands for a refund in connection with non-fulfillment of obligations.

In its defense, the bank refers to the force majeure circumstances that have arisen, namely, the introduction of international sanctions against Russia. In addition, on April 6 last year, Alfa-Bank was included in the US sanctions list. This circumstance, according to the bank, is important for the proceedings, since the disputed payment is made through a telecommunication system for transmitting information and making payments. In addition, according to the bank, the funds claimed by the plaintiff were not irretrievably lost.

The Court of first instance and the Court of Appeal sided with the plaintiff, but the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District in August of this year overturned these decisions and referred the case for a new hearing.

During the review of the case, Kartunova petitioned for the bank to reclaim contracts with JP Morgan Chase Bank, Alfa-Bank's appeals to the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury Department (OFAC) in the period from April 6, 2022 to the present and OFAC's responses to such appeals, the response of the OFAC licensing division to the bank's appeal of 7 July 2022. In addition, the plaintiff requests to provide "information on how much of the $582 million blocked in accordance with the appeal of Alfa-Bank JSC dated July 7, 2022 in American banks are the funds of Alfa-Bank JSC customers who are not affiliated with Alfa-Bank JSC and with the owners of JSC"Alfa-Bank".

Among other information that the plaintiff needs are data on the number of payments made by the bank's customers through JP Morgan Chase Bank from March 22, 2022 to April 6, 2022 and not reached the recipients, information on the number of customer payments returned by the bank to its customers through JP Morgan Chase Bank in the period from April 6, 2022 years to the present, including the periods of validity of the general licenses of the US Treasury. The court left the plaintiff's petition open and postponed the hearing until November 14.

Interfax sent a request to Alfa-Bank.

According to the results of the first half of 2023, Alfa-Bank ranks 4th in terms of assets in the Interfax-100 ranking. Last year, the Bank received a net loss under RAS of 117.1 billion rubles, including due to the freezing of some assets in foreign currency and currency revaluation.