The sale of the plant in Kaluga, Russia, should actually be completed in the coming days. A lawsuit from the car manufacturer Gaz should now delay this.

A court in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod on Monday froze all of the Volkswagen Group’s assets in Russia. As can be seen from court documents, the Russian carmaker Gaz had sued VW after the Dax group ended the cooperation in August.

Gaz – known in Soviet times for the production of Volga limousines – was Volkswagen‘s manufacturing partner until last year and assembled VW and Skoda models in Nizhny Novgorod. One of the co-owners of Gaz is oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The 55-year-old is on Western sanctions lists because of his importance for the Russian defense industry and his closeness to President Vladimir Putin. In addition to cars, Gaz also manufactures and repairs infantry fighting vehicles and armored vehicles.

According to a report in the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant, the company has applied to the court to declare the termination of the assembly contract null and void and to order VW to pay a contractual penalty of 15.6 billion rubles, the equivalent of 190 million euros. The lawsuit was filed on March 14 and ruled in Gaz’s favor on March 17. The news agencies Reuters and Interfax initially reported.

After the Russian attack on Ukraine, Volkswagen put its operations in Russia on hold and is currently trying to sell its plant in Kaluga, south of Moscow. This has a capacity of 225,000 cars per year, and production has been at a standstill since March 2022.