The decision to withdraw from Russia by the oil and gas group Wintershall Dea could also be expensive for taxpayers.

Wintershall CEO Mario Mehren said on Wednesday that some projects in Russia are secured by federal investment protection guarantees.

It's his job to keep the damage to Wintershall as low as possible, which is why he's checking whether all insurance policies and guarantees can be claimed, as well as a possible lawsuit against Gazprom.

Mehren himself does not quantify the amount.

Some time ago, the parent company BASF had valued them at roughly 2.5 billion euros.

When asked, BASF only explained that Wintershall Dea has been paying corresponding premiums in the millions every year for many years.

Bernd Freytag

Business correspondent Rhein-Neckar-Saar based in Mainz.

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Wintershall surprisingly announced on Tuesday evening that it would withdraw from all projects in Russia after all.

The financial consequences are considerable: the parent company BASF will therefore report a loss of almost 1.4 billion euros instead of the profit of around 5 billion euros expected by analysts.

In the fourth quarter, the chemical company wrote off the assets of its subsidiary in Russia and its stake in the pipeline operator Nord Stream AG by a further 5.4 billion.

In total, the impairments amount to 7.3 billion euros.

Wintershall sharply criticized the war against Ukraine right after it started and stopped all investment plans in Russia, but rejected a complete withdrawal.

At the time, the Executive Board justified its whereabouts with the fact that the billions in investments – above all for the production rights in Siberia – would otherwise fall to the Russian state without compensation.

“Russia has become unpredictable – in every respect”

According to Mehren, however, the relationship with Russia has continued to deteriorate since then, and Wintershall Dea has de facto been economically expropriated.

The company has not been able to get any money out of the country since February.

The accounts of the joint ventures were cleared, 2 billion euros in liquid funds were simply gone.

More say that Wintershall justified staying in Russia by not wanting to make any gifts to the Russian state.

But the Russian President did not want to wait.

"Putin took it easy."

As early as September, the prices at which Wintershall Dea had to sell the gas to Gazprom were capped by the state, retrospectively until March.

Not only the entire annual planning has become obsolete.

In this way, Putin skimmed off the profits retrospectively and ensured that the business "was no longer economically profitable going forward".

It was only this Monday that the Russian President issued a decree according to which the voting rights of foreign partners in joint ventures no longer have to be taken into account.

“Our stocks are worthless shells.

We neither get the economic benefits nor can we exercise the voting rights. “Personally, too, the end of the collaboration, which has finally existed since the early 1990s, is a disappointment.

Since the beginning of the war there have been almost no more conversations, the last telephone conversation he had had in June, since then there have only been letters, said Mehren.

According to his words, even private contacts only report very selectively.

Since the war, there have been "plenty of ears" that have been listening.