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Targeted by the sanctions of the European Union but cleared by the European judiciary, the head of the Alfa Group wants to recover his assets. However, the freezing of his assets remains in effect.

He is one of the 1,706 Russians affected by the fourteen packages of European sanctions imposed on Moscow since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Mikhail Maratovich Fridman, co-shareholder of the Alfa Group and holder of a fortune estimated at at least €11.3 billion, received a favorable judgment from the European Union Court on April 10. The judges ruled that it could not be proven that he had supported the decision-makers responsible for the war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.

Buoyed by this ruling, the oligarch, described by the European Council as a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, now intends to take the next step: he is demanding that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which validated and applied the European sanctions, return all his assets, as well as provide financial compensation for the "irreversible and catastrophic damage" caused to his business. In total, he is asking for $16 billion (€14.5 billion).

The information, revealed on August 14 by the Brussels-based site EUobserver.com, has been confirmed in Luxembourg. When questioned by Le Monde, the office of Prime Minister Luc Frieden gave a terse response: "Mr. Mikhail Fridman has initiated arbitration proceedings, and the government is currently analyzing the request and the next steps with its legal advisors."

Assisted by a team of lawyers, including those from Omnia Strategy, the London-based firm led by Cherie Blair, wife of former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, and in Paris by the Kiejman-Marembert law firm, the head of Alfa (banking and insurance), who is also an investor in telecommunications, energy, and water treatment, is demanding that the dispute be resolved under the rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). This body, established in 1966, aims to harmonize and unify international commercial law.

The case is certainly embarrassing for the Grand Duchy, whose gross domestic product was €79.3 billion in 2023. Mr. Fridman's advisors argue that Luxembourg violated the guarantees offered by a bilateral agreement concluded in 1989 with Moscow, which also protects his investments in several other countries: the United Kingdom—where the businessman lives in a mansion and where he created the investment fund LetterOne—Ukraine, where he was born, as well as Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.

In one of the rare interviews he has given to journalists, Mr. Fridman told Bloomberg in March 2022 that the European decision had "stunned" him. "If EU officials believe I can approach Putin and tell him to stop the war, they are wrong. The distance between him and me is like between the Earth and the cosmos," he said. In the summer of 2023, British authorities had authorized a partial unfreezing of his bank accounts for his "current expenses" (€350,000), as revealed by The New York Times.

The European Council's decision to sanction the oligarch was based on a series of findings, including the fact that Mr. Fridman and his associate, Piotr Aven, had supported the war against Ukraine. Alfa Bank and Alfa Insurance, in which the two men are co-shareholders, provided loans to arms manufacturers and insured the Russian National Guard in the occupied Ukrainian areas, as well as military bases.

Mr. Fridman argued that he had resigned from his positions in Russian companies—though without selling his shares. He also denied any involvement in a conflict that he had initially called a "tragedy," while refraining from criticizing Vladimir Putin. Although he did not attend the oligarchs' meeting called by the Russian president on the day of the Ukraine invasion, February 24, 2022, he did return to Moscow in the fall of 2023, without expressing any criticism of the Kremlin leader.

In Brussels, the European Council still considers that Mr. Fridman belongs among the individuals targeted by the sanctions. Its decision was confirmed in March. The oligarch's assets remain frozen, and lifting this freeze would require a unanimous decision by the 27 member states.

Several dozen Russians are currently attempting to be removed from the list, and European judges have ruled in some cases that being a close associate of Vladimir Putin, having played a role in the country's economy, or having family ties to a regime supporter are not sufficient reasons to justify an asset freeze.

Sometimes deemed ineffective, the sanctions remain, in reality, one of the few effective tools of common foreign policy, with the office of High Representative Josep Borrell claiming that they deprive Moscow of €400 billion in annual revenues. Russian opposition figures, including those close to Alexei Navalny, are calling for the sanctions to be accompanied by a new mechanism: they should, in their view, only be lifted if the individuals concerned publicly break with the Putin regime.