GTLK recovered 220 million euros in a London court for seized ferries

In mid-June 2023, the State Transport Leasing Company collected €220 million from the Norwegian shipping company Havila Kystruten as compensation for four cruise ferry ships built at the Turkish shipyard Tersan.

In 2019, the State Transport Leasing Company (GTLK) ordered four ferries - Capella, Castor, Polaris and Pollux - at the Tersan shipyard in Turkey, which is located near Istanbul. The length of each vessel is 124 m, width - 22 m, draft - 5.2 m. Ferries can carry more than 600 passengers, all four ferries are equipped with hybrid engines running on liquefied gas and batteries. In the future, ships will also be able to operate on hydrogen fuel.

State transport leasing company recovered €220 million from the Norwegian shipping company Havila Kystruten

The Hong Kong company GTLK Asia (a subsidiary of GTLK) invested €171 million in the construction of two ships. Two more vessels were funded by another Group company, GTLK Europe DAC of Ireland. The lead vessel was due to be delivered at the end of 2021, with the entire series due to be built by mid-summer 2022.

We expect that this money will go to the accounts of foreign structures of GTLK in the coming months. This is an indicative case when even foreign courts do not support such behavior of former partners, "said Yevgeny Dietrich, General Director of GTLK.

After the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine at the end of February 2022, GTLK, together with its subsidiaries located in Europe and Asia, fell under the sanctions of the United States, Great Britain and the EU. As a result, the leasing company was forced to take organizational measures to protect its foreign assets. For example, GTLK aircraft were re-registered from foreign registers to Russian ones. In addition, some aircraft ordered from foreign airlines stopped flying because they could not use the assets of the sanctioned company.

In April 2022, the Norwegian government demanded that the shipping company Havila Voyages terminate the lease agreement with a subsidiary of GTLK by September 2022 and re-register the assets for a new owner not associated with the Russian lessor. The vessels were also insured through GTLK Asia and the operator was required to enter into a new policy.

In May 2023, Norwegian media reported that Havila Voyages was unable to obtain the third and fourth vessels of the series due to sanctions because the project requires EU and US licenses for funding. Two ferries for May 2023 have already been built and were in the waters of the Turkish shipyard, but this construction and storage fees have not yet been paid.

However, it will be difficult for GTLK to receive even those funds for which a lawsuit has been filed in London, since Yevgeny Zubkov, a lawyer at Forward Legal, notes that in Russia it is impossible to seize property from organizations under sanctions without paying compensation. But payments to those subject to restrictions are expressly prohibited by sanctions law. Yuri Fedyukin, managing partner of the law firm Enterprise Legal Solutions, said that the way out in such a situation is to make a payment to a blocked account, from which a sanctioned person, after receiving the necessary permits or lifting the sanctions, will be able to take the money.^[1]

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