A Luxembourg court has ruled that the country’s finance ministry wrongly refused to release frozen securities belonging to an unsanctioned Russian company and its clients, in the first European judgment to tackle the substance of whether such assets can be freed.
The administrative tribunal annulled a ministry decision of 26 September 2023 that had rejected requests lodged in late December 2022 for the return of the securities. The assets have been stuck since 3 June 2022, when the European Union sanctioned Russia’s central securities depository, the National Settlement Depository (NSD), and a Luxembourg-based custodian froze securities registered in the depository’s name. The names of the company, its clients and the custodian are blanked out in the published judgment, which is dated 30 October.
At the heart of the case was Article 6 of EU Regulation 269/2014, which lets national authorities release frozen assets so that a listed entity can make a payment due under a contract signed before its listing. The ministry argued that “payment” meant money, not a transfer of securities, and that the only route for securities had been a general licence it issued on 16 December 2022, which lapsed on 7 January 2023. The court rejected that reading, holding that payment must be understood broadly, so returning clients’ securities qualifies as long as no listed person receives them. Any fees owed to the NSD for the transfers must themselves stay frozen. The reasoning rests on the EU General Court’s September 2024 judgment in NSD v Council, in which the depository lost its challenge to the sanctions.
The ruling goes further than a Belgian decision of 11 September, in which the Council of State annulled the Treasury’s refusal to free funds that BCS Bank held at Euroclear through the NSD, but only on the question of who had the power to say no. The Luxembourg court took on the reason for saying no.
The judgment does not, on its face, free a single security. It annuls the refusal, and Article 6 says authorities “may” authorise a release on conditions they consider appropriate. One of the clients was added to the EU sanctions list on 18 December 2023; the court set that aside because it judged the ministry’s decision as things stood on the day it was taken, leaving that client’s holdings in doubt. No appeal had been reported by 5 November, and Luxembourg’s public services portal says tribunal judgments can generally be appealed to the Cour administrative within 40 days.
Neither the Luxembourg nor the Belgian case touches the Russian central bank’s reserves, which are the subject of a separate fight over roughly €200 billion held at Euroclear. The nearest available figure for private holders is the $14 billion of frozen stocks that the Carnegie Endowment attributed to more than five million Russian retail investors last year, a total not tied to either case. The judgment was first reported by the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti on 5 November.
Sources: bne IntelliNews, “Luxembourg court overturns refusal to release Russian firm’s frozen securities” (https://www.byteseu.com/2503482/); Vedomosti; Luxembourg Administrative Tribunal judgment of 30 October 2026. Note: the reporting of this ruling rests on Vedomosti and bne IntelliNews, and the parties are unnamed in the published judgment.
