OWH SE v RTI and Rusal: High Court dismisses public policy challenge to €214m arbitration award

The High Court has dismissed Rusal's application to set aside permission to enforce a €214 million LCIA arbitration award in favour of OWH SE iL, the German credit institution formerly known as VTB Bank (Europe) SE. Mrs Justice Dias, sitting in the Commercial Court, also refused an adjournment pending a proposed appeal to the Privy Council and a freshly commenced BIT arbitration. The judgement, handed down on 1 May 2026, represents the latest in a series of failed attempts by the Defendants to resist enforcement of the September 2024 award.

The underlying dispute arose from currency swap transactions hedging the Rusal Group's rouble exposure, documented under an ISDA Master Agreement governed by English law. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, VTB Russia — OWH's parent — was designated under UK, Jersey and Gibraltar sanctions. RTI declined to meet margin calls on the basis that doing so might indirectly make funds available to VTB Russia as a designated person. OWH declared an Event of Default and served a Termination Notice, generating a close-out liability of approximately €214 million. The arbitral tribunal upheld OWH's position, finding RTI estopped from denying valid service and contractually precluded from invoking the illegality provisions through failure to give timely notice.

Rusal's central argument before Dias J was that Article 46A of the Sanctions and Asset-Freezing (Jersey) Law 2019 — which mirrors section 44 of the UK's Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 — conferred an immunity on RTI that ought to be given effect as a matter of English public policy, the two regimes being entirely aligned. Dias J accepted that a good arguable case existed that the Jersey courts had erred on the retrospectivity question, a view fortified by the Supreme Court's recent analysis of section 44 in Celestial Aviation Services Ltd v UniCredit Bank GmbH [2026] UKSC 10. She similarly acknowledged a plausible argument that RTI's belief in a sanctions breach was objectively reasonable, adopting the reasoning of McCullough JA in the Jersey Court of Appeal. Even on those assumptions, however, she found the public policy argument insufficient to displace enforcement.

Three considerations were determinative. First, section 44 and Article 46A create an optional defence, not a prohibition on payment: there is no allegation that paying the margin call or the award would actually breach any sanctions provision applicable to either Defendant. Secondly, the immunity point was never raised before the arbitral tribunal, and no evidential foundation was laid to support it. Thirdly, Rusal — incorporated in Russia, not Jersey — could not itself rely on Article 46A, and Dias J could discern no basis in English public policy for refusing enforcement against a guarantor who was a stranger to the Jersey regime.

The court also addressed the Henderson v Henderson threshold, concluding that Rusal was not barred from raising English public policy for the first time at the enforcement stage: the point had not apparently occurred to the Defendants' lawyers during the arbitration and there was no evidence of deliberate tactical deferral. That said, Dias J made clear that the failure to raise the point before the tribunal was a relevant factor in the overall balance.

On the proposed BIT arbitration — launched against OWH and the Federal Republic of Germany on the day Rusal served its evidence in support of the adjournment application — the court was unpersuaded. The claim, asserting unjust enrichment and unlawful conspiracy arising from BaFin's ring-fencing measures, was characterised as "ambitious" and the suggestion of a conspiracy between OWH and the German state as "bordering on the surreal." Given a likely delay of over a year and the FRG's obvious financial standing, no adjournment was warranted.

Both the Adjournment Application and the Set Aside Application were accordingly dismissed. Costs in respect of the withdrawn alternative service challenge are to be determined at a subsequent hearing.