Updated 7:05 p.m. Moscow Time
MOSCOW, September 15 (RIA Novosti) -Moscow views a recent auction of a building of the Russian Trade Mission in Stockholm as an illegitimate move violating the status of diplomatic immunity, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
"The Russian side does not recognize neither the legitimacy of actions taken by the Bailiffs Service of Sweden in line with a decision by Sweden's Supreme Court in 2011…nor the legitimacy of the ruling itself as it refers to a Russian facility that enjoys the status of diplomatic immunity," the ministry said in a statement.
"Russia reserves the right to take adequate retaliatory measures against the Swedish side," the statement said.
The Swedish authorities carried out an auction of the building, which hosts offices and living quarters, on September 12 despite numerous protests by Russia.
The same day, Press Secretary for Presidential Affairs Viktor Khrekov said that Russia will appeal the results of the auction.
The auction formed part of a decade-long legal battle between Russia and German investor Franz Sedelmayer, who lost $2.3 million in a joint investment project with Russian authorities in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s.
The international commercial arbitration court in Stockholm ruled in favor of Sedelmayer in 1998 in his suit against the Russian government
Sweden's Supreme Court lifted the Russian Trade Mission's sovereign immunity status in 2011 and ruled that it should be sold for Sedelmayer's benefit. According to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this decision violates the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
