In Russia, Battle Between Rosneft and Private Firm Stirs Investment Worries
The dispute between Sistema and Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, dates back to a 2014 nationalization,
pitting two of the country’s most important companies against each other.
“The situation is a direct consequence of the plaintiffs, who must have known
that freezing our assets would lead to a technical default,” Mikhail Shamolin, Sistema’s director, said in a statement on Monday.
Sistema and its principal owner, Vladimir P. Yevtushenkov, have stayed away from politics — in one case, the company smoothly navigated
the ouster of a former mayor, even though many of its assets are in the city of Moscow, staying aloof from the political struggle.
The company said the technical default, a formal notice triggered by its failure to comply with some conditions on part of its debt, had occurred
because a court overseeing the case had frozen Sistema assets used as collateral for the loans.
“If Sistema wants to use a wholly formal process, such as freezing assets, to deceive its creditors,
that says a lot about the business style of this company,” he said.
“This conflict is causing a lot of harm to the investment attractiveness of Russia,” Aleksander Y. Abramov, a professor at the Russian Academy of National Economy
and Public Administration, said in a telephone interview.