Irish lessor Carlyle Group has launched a new round of legal claims in the United Kingdom High Court in yet another example of lessors suing insurers and lessees over aircraft stuck in Russia since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

According to reports in Ireland's Independent and Irish Business News, on April 14, Carlyle and its subsidiaries Amber Aircraft Leasing and Wells Fargo laid charges against Chaucer Corporate Capital (No 3) Ltd and AIG's UK unit.

In February, Carlyle Aviation Management and Ireland-based subsidiary Sasof III (D) Aviation Ireland DAC and Wells Fargo opened a case against Axa XL Insurance and Liberty Corporate Capital, the latter being a speciality insurer that is part of US-owned Liberty Mutual.

In another recent case, the High Court of England and Wales found that banking group UniCredit wrongly withheld USD68.9 million in payment guarantees from subsidiaries of lessors AerCap and Aircastle, for fear of busting Western sanctions against Russia.

According to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), a significant number of Western-built aircraft were operating in Russia at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, many of them owned by Western lessors and registered in Bermuda or Ireland. Many of those aircraft have been illegally seized by Russian entities. More than 400 aircraft valued at about USD10 billion are estimated to have been seized by Russia when Vladimir Putin signed a law enabling local carriers to move them to the Russian register. They have now been written off entirely by lessors, with no expectation that they will be returned. European Union (EU) and US sanctions against Russia prohibit the export of spare parts to that country, giving rise to serious safety concerns over aircraft and engines still flying in Russia but not being properly maintained.

The Independent reports that the latest publicly-available accounts for Sasof III (D) show it had three of four aircraft it controlled out on lease in 2020. They show that the firm had aircraft worth USD27.7 million on its books at the end of that year and made a pre-tax profit of USD4.1 million in the period. The accounts were signed off before the invasion of Ukraine.

Accounts for Amber Aircraft Leasing for 2021 show that in July 2021, the company agreed to extend to April 2025 the lease of the only aircraft on its books to its Russian client, with a monthly rent of USD160,000 between July 2021 and April 2022, which fell to USD140,000 on April 2022. However, Amber terminated the lease in March 2022 to comply with sanctions against Russia. "The company anticipates that repossession of the aircraft could be a long and difficult process, if at all," Amber's accounts note.