Russian court orders seizure of $440mn from JPMorgan

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

A Russian court has ordered the seizure of JPMorgan Chase funds totalling $439.5mn after state-owned lender VTB filed a lawsuit to “recover losses” from the largest US bank.

The funds are in accounts frozen after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The decision was published in the Russian court register on Wednesday.

The court said it had ordered the seizure of all funds in JPMorgan’s accounts in Russia but not securities and other property including the domain jpmorgan.ru.

VTB filed its lawsuit on April 17. The following day, JPMorgan Chase filed a lawsuit against the Russian lender in a US court to stop the seizure, seen as a violation of an agreement between the two banks to settle disputes in New York.

The Russian court order underscores the difficulties US banks such as JPMorgan have had in following through with their pledges to close their Russia operations since Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered the war on Ukraine in February 2022.

When JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs announced their intention that year to close their Russia businesses, which made up just a small part of their worldwide operations, experts warned that any exit could take more than a year to accomplish. Other western banks including Citigroup, Italy’s UniCredit and Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International are still operating in Russia.

JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has been an advocate for US support for Ukraine during the conflict and warned this month that recent geopolitical events “may very well be creating risks that could eclipse anything since world war two”.

JPMorgan declined to comment on the ruling. VTB did not immediately comment.

Additional reporting by Ortenca Aliaj in London