The chairman of the Swiss firm Noga, Nessim Gaon, confirmed on Friday that a Su-30 Russian fighter jet at the Paris Air Show was seized to cover an outstanding Russian government debt.
"It's true that we asked for the seizure. The Russian state must pay what it owes us," Gaon said in a telephone interview.
The jet was seized by French police following a lawsuit filed by the Swiss firm, which has claimed it is owed 63 million dollars by the Russian government.
Russian embassy officials in France called the incident at the air show in Le Bourget a "provocation".
Noga and Moscow each accuse the other of having failed to honor a 1991 food and oil deal worth 1.5 billion dollars.
Moscow says it paid the bill for the trade deal with Noga just before the Russian currency lost nearly all its value in 1993.
But the Swiss trading firm has insisted just a fraction of the original contract was covered in terms of dollars.
In the ensuing legal battle, Russian central bank accounts were frozen in Switzerland and Luxembourg, and the Russian ship, the Sedov, was temporarily seized in the French port of Brest in 2000.
Gaon said on Friday he believed the Russian state owned him between 2.4 and three billion dollars -- GENEVA (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
