MOSCOW RusKhimAlyans, a subsidiary of Russian gas giant Gazprom, has filed lawsuits seeking a total of 31 billion roubles ($348 million) from Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, Russian court documents show.

RusKhimAlyans, in which Gazprom has a 50% stake, is seeking more than 22 billion roubles from Deutsche Bank and over 8 billion roubles from Commerzbank, according to the documents filed at the Court of Arbitration of St Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.

No other details were available.

In January, the same court ordered nearly $500 million of assets belonging to German industrial gases company Linde, to be frozen at the request of RusKhimAlyans, which is building a gas complex at the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga.

In 2021, Linde and Renaissance Heavy Industries signed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Gazprom and its partners for the Ust-Luga gas complex.

Linde notified the customer in May and June 2022 that it had suspended work under the contract due to European Union sanctions imposed after Russia sent thousands of its troops into neighbouring Ukraine.

($1 = 89.0585 roubles)

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by David Goodman and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)