A Moscow court has ordered Euroclear, the Brussels-based securities depository, to pay about $194.2 million to Silicium-2, a little-known Russian finance company, in the latest ruling arising from Western sanctions on Russia’s financial system.
The Moscow Arbitration Court partly granted the claim on 28 July, according to The Moscow Times and the St Petersburg outlet Fontanka. The dispute concerns securities belonging to Russian investors that were held through the National Settlement Depository (NSD) and frozen at Euroclear after the EU sanctioned the NSD in 2022.
A claim that grew fivefold
Silicium-2, which RIA Novosti says was set up in May 2022 as a special-purpose vehicle for pooling financial assets, first sued in May 2025 for 32.8 billion roubles, then about $417.5 million. By October the claim had risen to more than $2.2 billion plus interest, The Moscow Times reports. The company also sought more than $4.5 million in unpaid coupon income.
The final award was far smaller. Fontanka reports that it matched exactly the counter-calculation Euroclear itself submitted, while the court described the claim as justified only in part.
Each Moscow judgment is small next to the frozen state reserves, but together they turn Euroclear’s remaining Russian exposure into a target.
Part of a wider legal war
Kommersant estimates that Russian investors and companies have filed more than 100 lawsuits against Euroclear, seeking about 200 billion roubles ($2.5 billion) in total. The largest is the Bank of Russia’s claim for 18.2 trillion roubles, which a Moscow court upheld in May and an appeal court later confirmed, according to Fontanka.
Euroclear holds much of the roughly €300 billion in Russian state assets frozen in the West. In June it sued the Russian central bank in a Brussels commercial court, arguing that the closed Moscow proceedings were “fundamentally unfair” and that only Belgian courts can rule on its affairs. TradeWar found no reported Euroclear response specific to the Silicium-2 ruling.
Russian court rulings cannot be enforced in the EU, but The Moscow Times notes they could be used to seize Euroclear assets still inside Russia or in countries friendly to Moscow.
What to watch
- Whether Euroclear appeals and whether Silicium-2 moves to enforce against assets in Russia.
- Progress of Euroclear’s Brussels case against the Bank of Russia.
- How the EU’s new rule against recognising Russian sanctions-related judgments is applied.
