What happened
DTEK Krymenergo, a Ukrainian company in Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK group, was the main electricity distributor in Crimea until 2014 and lost its assets on the peninsula in 2015. On November 1, 2023, a tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, hearing the case under the 1998 Russia–Ukraine investment treaty and the UNCITRAL Rules, found that Russia had expropriated those assets and ordered it to pay DTEK $207.8M in damages plus interest and $10.8M in costs. On December 1, 2023, The Hague District Court granted leave to enforce the award in the Netherlands. On February 1, 2024, Russia applied to The Hague Court of Appeal to set the award aside, and that case is pending. According to the Amsterdam court, DTEK’s claim against Russia stood at $306.97M on April 16, 2026, and Russia had not paid it. DTEK is also enforcing the award in the United States: on February 13, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that U.S. courts have jurisdiction over its petition, and on June 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Russia’s appeal. In England, the High Court stayed enforcement in May 2025 pending the decision of The Hague Court of Appeal.
To collect Russia’s debt, on July 21, 2025, DTEK attached assets in the Netherlands belonging to several Gazprom group companies that were not parties to the arbitration: the funds and other assets that ABN AMRO holds for South Stream Transport B.V. (SST), the shares in SST held by its Russian parent company, and Gazprom International’s 50% stake in Wintershall Noordzee B.V. SST, founded in 2012 and based in Amsterdam, operates the offshore section of the TurkStream gas pipeline, which carries Russian gas to Turkey and on to Southeast Europe. Its sole indirect shareholder is PJSC Gazprom, in which Russia holds 50.23%. The attachments were made under Article 435(3) of the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure, which lets a creditor who considers that it may recover from property of a third party attach it without prior leave of the court. The third party may object within eight days, in which case the attachment becomes a prejudgment attachment as against it, and the creditor needs an enforceable title against that party to proceed. DTEK argues that the Gazprom group companies can be identified with Russia or are abusing their separate legal identity. SST called that position unsupported, saying that it is an independent bearer of rights and obligations and that DTEK cannot recover from its assets without an enforceable title against SST itself. In August 2025, SST asked the Amsterdam District Court to lift the attachment and bar new ones, arguing also that this route was an abuse of rights because it sidesteps the rules on prejudgment attachment. On October 1, 2025, the interim relief judge (kort geding) refused. The judge held that whether SST can be identified with Russia is a question of principle for proceedings on the merits, that DTEK had argued its position sufficiently, and that SST had not shown that the attachment seriously harmed it. The judge relied on DTEK’s undertaking to sue SST on the merits and not to realize the attached assets before judgment. Because SST had deliberately not objected under Article 435(3), the judge treated the attachment of its funds as executory for the time being. SST was ordered to pay €1,999 in costs.
On October 2, 2025, DTEK brought proceedings on the merits in the Amsterdam District Court against the Gazprom group companies whose assets it had attached. It seeks declarations that they are liable for Russia’s debt under the award and must allow execution against the attached assets. No judgment has been given. In a parallel dispute over the Wintershall Noordzee shares, The Hague District Court on September 5, 2025, and The Hague Court of Appeal on February 24, 2026, refused Gazprom International’s request to lift the attachment. The Court of Appeal held that Article 435(3) allows recovery from a third party’s assets where that party can be identified with the debtor or abuses its separate identity, assessed that question for the Russian company Gazprom International under Russian law, and did not find DTEK’s claim clearly unfounded. It also rejected the plea of Russia’s immunity from execution, finding that DTEK had sufficiently shown the shares’ commercial purpose and adding that immunity from execution may be restricted where a state has breached peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens).
In April 2026, citing media reports of a possible move of SST’s business to Hungary, DTEK asked the interim relief judge to bar SST from disposing of its TurkStream assets and from moving its business abroad, and to appoint a temporary independent director. SST replied that it has no concrete plans to relocate, that no assets have been transferred, and that any restructuring moving its business abroad would follow mandatory Dutch procedures that protect creditors. On May 18, 2026, the court refused the bans and the director as too broad and disproportionate, held SST to its undertaking not to move assets, and ordered it only to notify DTEK of any completed or intended transactions moving significant assets (around €100M). Each party bears its own costs.
Why it is notable
The case tests whether a creditor holding an investment treaty award against a state can recover from the assets of a Dutch company that belongs to a state-controlled corporation and took no part in the arbitration. The court on the merits has to decide whether SST can be identified with Russia or is abusing its separate legal identity by relying on it. Also in dispute are the Article 435(3) route, which lets a creditor attach assets of companies linked to the debtor without prior leave of the court, and state immunity from execution. The outcome also depends on whether the award itself survives the set-aside case in The Hague Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal’s ruling in the Gazprom International dispute, which allowed immunity from execution to be restricted for breaches of jus cogens, was given in interim proceedings and concerns a Russian company, while SST is Dutch, and no court has yet decided the identification question on the merits. SST’s shares were attached in Amsterdam once before, in 2019, at the request of Naftogaz of Ukraine, but Gazprom itself was the debtor then, and the attachment was lifted in early 2020 after the parties settled. The dispute concerns the operator of TurkStream, which carries Russian gas to Turkey and to countries in Southeast and Central Europe.