Two crab supply contracts concluded in 2021 have not been paid on time. According to the original terms, Arctic Seafoods was supposed to settle with Eta-Trade by the end of 2022, but the parties postponed the deadline several times. In 2024, the Murmansk company terminated its contracts and filed lawsuits with the Moscow Arbitration Court.
The court recovered the principal debt in full: $28.3 million for the first claim and $6.8 million for the second. The court rejected the claim for a penalty for late payment. Judge Lidia Ageeva explained that the plaintiff has the right to file separate claims for collecting interest for using other people's funds.
The court did not accept the defendant's arguments. A lawyer for Arctic Seafoods said that the US anti-Russian sanctions prevented the company from fulfilling its obligations, which made payments impossible, and the products had to be sold at low prices, as they also fell under restrictions. The company's representative added that in case of a change in the situation, Arctic Seafoods will try "to some extent" to fulfill its obligations.
The two reviewed cases are just the beginning. From April to July 2024, the Moscow Arbitration Court registered 11 lawsuits from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk fishing companies against the same defendant. The total amount of claims in all cases is not disclosed in the materials, but the scale of the claims already made indicates a systemic problem with the calculations.
Arctic Seafoods positions itself as a major distributor of Barents king crabs and opilio snow crabs in the US market. The supply of these types of seafood from Russia to the United States and the EU was banned in 2022 as one of the sanctions measures.
For Russian exporters who have unpaid contracts with Western counterparties, the decision sets an important precedent: Russian arbitration does not recognize the sanctions pressure on a foreign buyer as a circumstance that automatically removes debt obligations. It will be extremely difficult to recover a decision through American courts or enforce it in the United States — this is a separate and open issue for all participants in such disputes.
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