(Bloomberg) -- Sanctioned Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov sued a German unit of UBS Group AG over anti-money laundering reports that he claims triggered an illegal criminal investigation against him.

The Russian tycoon filed the suit at the Frankfurt Regional Court on June 7, his lawyers said in a statement on Monday. The suit claims the bank’s reports — filed from 2018-2022 — wrongly pointed to potentially suspicious financial transactions.

A Frankfurt court spokeswoman said that while the tribunal received the filing, Usmanov hasn’t yet paid the legal fees needed to get the case going. As a consequence, UBS hasn’t received notice of the action, she said. 

Usmanov’s lawyers said they got the court’s invoice only on Monday and immediately commissioned the transfer. They previously applied to Germany’s central bank to exempt the transaction from the sanctions imposed on their client, they added.

UBS didn’t reply to an email seeking comment.

The tycoon was sanctioned by the US, European Union and the UK after Russia invaded Ukraine. He is among dozens of billionaires, including Roman Abramovich, and family members who’ve flocked to the bloc’s top courts in an attempt to extricate themselves from the list and have their funds unfrozen — with little success.

In 2022, German authorities carried out nationwide raids of properties linked to Usmanov as part of a probe looking into sanctions violation because he allegedly kept — and paid security staff to look after — a luxury compound in Bavaria. 

UBS’s Frankfurt and Munich offices were searched by prosecutors as part of the probe. A Frankfurt court later ruled that the Usmanov-linked search warrants were illegal. 

Usmanov founded USM, a Russia-based investment group that controls Metalloinvest, Russia’s largest iron ore producer. He is Russia’s seventh richest person with a net worth of almost $19 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On top of Russian citizenship he is also an honorary citizen of Uzbekistan, where he was born.

(Updates with lawyer comment in the fourth paragraph.)

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