| It made sense, but it might be too late now. The structure is rather complicated: Afaik it works (or used to) this way: There is Gaszprom (the Mother), Gazprom Export, Gazprom Germania and a bunch of distributors. Gazprom sells to Gazprom Export which sells to Gazprom Germania which sells to its distributors. This helps to evade taxes and allows for a bunch of nice management jobs to be distributed to German/Russian politicians. The distributors pay the gas in Euro to Gazprom Germania which collects the money and sends it via Belgium to Gazprom Export. With the Sanctions this would mean that that Gazprom Export could convert Euro to Rubles, so the Money in Belgium has been frozen. To circumvent this Gazprom sold (or tried to) Gazprom Germania to some offshore entities out of the sanctions reach. To hinder Gazprom to do this the German goverment tried to seize control but it might be already too late and they ended up with an empty shell. |