Russian court rejects bid to seize the remaining 45% of Petersburg Oil Terminal

Court refuses the seizure

The Arbitration Court of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region rejected a prosecution request to transfer 45% of Petersburg Oil Terminal to the state, according to Meduza. The disputed stake belongs to Elena Vasilyeva, widow of terminal co-owner Sergei Vasilyev. Prosecutors had challenged a 2022 sequence in which shares were moved from Cyprus-registered Mobalco Holdings to Vasilyev and then transferred to his wife during a corporate de-offshoring process.

Assets remain restrained

The decision does not necessarily end the dispute or release all restrictions. Meduza reported that the court had frozen the contested shares in August together with 4.4 billion rubles in dividends. The precise written reasoning and any appeal timetable were not available in the inspected sources. Those documents will determine whether the ruling rests on ownership evidence, limitation rules, procedural defects or a rejection of the prosecution's theory that the transactions were invalid.

Control is already divided

The remaining 55% of the terminal followed a different path. Prosecutors obtained that stake from the heirs of founder Dmitry Skigin, citing their German and French citizenship. Meduza reported that the state property agency transferred those shares in July to Roskhim, a company associated in public reporting with the family of Arkady Rotenberg. The latest ruling therefore preserves a split ownership structure at strategically important Baltic oil infrastructure.

Why the refusal stands out

Meduza described successful resistance to large state asset-seizure claims as rare in recent Russian practice. The case matters beyond one shareholder because it tests how courts handle earlier offshore structures, inheritance, foreign citizenship and state claims over critical commercial property. A final victory for the private owner could mark a boundary around prosecutorial recovery actions; an appeal reversing the ruling would reinforce the broader movement toward state-aligned ownership.

The external energy context

The terminal also sits inside a heavily constrained international oil sector. In July the Council of the European Union adopted a new sanctions package targeting Russian energy revenues, refineries, traders, ports and shadow-fleet activity. Those measures do not decide this Russian ownership lawsuit and should not be presented as its legal basis. They do, however, explain why control of export infrastructure has become more strategically and commercially consequential.

What to watch

The next evidence should come from the court's written judgment, the status of the share and dividend freezes, and any prosecution appeal. Corporate filings may also show whether voting rights, dividends or terminal operations change while litigation continues. Until those records emerge, the verified development is narrow but significant: the first-instance court refused the requested transfer of the remaining 45%, while existing restraints and the state's control of the other stake remain in place.