A lawsuit against the Strabag construction concern was filed with the Regional Court of the Austrian city of Klagenfurt.
Its “author” is Rasperia Trading Limited, a Cypriot company controlled by Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska. The concern, through a Cypriot intermediary, also belonged to a millionaire by 27.8%.
This is reported by Kommersant with reference to the newspaper Der Standard.
According to the publication, the reason for filing a lawsuit was the termination of cooperation due to sanctions against a common shareholder.
This spring, the other owners of Strabag (the Haselsteiner family, the Uniqa-Raiffeisen group and the Streubesits) terminated their syndicate agreement with Rasperia. Thus, all cooperation with the Russian businessman was terminated. The Cypriot company lost its voting rights in Strabag, in addition, dividend payments were stopped. Rasperia’s supervisory board member Thomas Bull was asked to write a letter of resignation.
The official reason for Deripaska and all his companies to fall under EU sanctions has been named: his alleged support for the Russian military operation in Ukraine. Its assets in Europe are frozen, entry into the territory of the union is prohibited.
Recall that Deripaska is considered one of the main party-goers of the World Economic Forum in Davos. But this year the meeting of the elite will be quite modest. Traditionally, luxury parties on behalf of Russian billionaires have been canceled, as businessmen are not on the list of invitees.