MOSCOW, May 10 - RAPSI. The Moscow Commercial Court has suspended until June 4 its hearing of the Russian Basketball Federation's $2 million lawsuit against the United Basketball League, organizer of the VTB United League championship.

The court decided to suspend the case after it opened proceedings in the defendant's counterclaim to recover over 2 million rubles ($67,000).

The plaintiff seeks to recover the amount of pledge and unjust enrichment, terminate the donation contract, cancel the entire donation, returning the funds which were misused, and also to terminate the advertizing contract. The federation stated in court that the money was allocated to the league for holding the 2009/2010 VTB United League championship.

The plaintiff claims that the league has not provided a satisfactory report of how the money was spent.

The league's lawyers said that the federation signed a sponsorship contract with VTB Bank for holding the championship and the league was, in fact, a subcontractor. The league had provided satisfactory reports to VTB and the bank had been happy to continue cooperating with it.

VTB has been brought in at the defendant's request to act as a third party in the case.

The Moscow Commercial Court is also hearing the United Basketball League's 36 million ruble ($1.2 million) lawsuit against the Russian Basketball Federation.

The United Basketball League is suing the federation for the non observance of the sponsorship contract for the 2010/2011 basketball season, according to which the defendant committed to give 35 million rubles ($1.1 million) to the United Basketball League. However, the federation has denied the claim and has lodged a counterclaim for the recovery of nearly 55 million rubles ($1.8 million) including over 9 million rubles ($302,000) in loans and over 44 million rubles ($1.5 million) in donations.

VTB Bank is Russia's second-largest bank in terms of assets. It was established in October 1990. The state owns an 85.5 percent stake in the bank.