MOSCOW, November 21 (RAPSI) – The Moscow Commercial Court will hear on December 5 a lawsuit filed by VTB Bank seeking 2.99 billion rubles (about $78 million) in debt from mining and metal giant Mechel, RAPSI reports on Friday from the court.

A VTB spokesperson said the bank signed a loan agreement for 43 billion rubles (about $1 billion) with Mechel in December 2010. The lawsuit is due to Mechel’s failure to service the loan from March 21, 2014 to September 23, 2014.

A Mechel representative said that metal prices plummeted between March and July and that the company could not market its products at acceptable prices. None of this could be foreseen, the spokesperson said.

As of February 2014, Mechel’s net debt amounted to over $8 billion, of which it owed $5.5 billion to Russia’s top three banks: Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank.

VTB head Andrei Kostin said in September that they would sue Mechel, because it had refused to convert its debt into shares. In October, Kostin said they had resumed talks with Mechel in view of new circumstances and need several more days to determine if the issue can be settled out of court.