Mr. Putin has not commented publicly on the case, one of dozens involving jilted foreign investors who have gone to court since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union to try to receive compensation for deals gone awry.

Image President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has not commented on the case, but dismissed two officials involved in dealing with it. Credit... Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti Kremlin Press Service, via Associated Press

But he has quietly dismissed two officials involved in dealing with Mr. Sedelmayer’s claims, including the head of the presidential property department, Vladimir Kozhin, who was fired last year. Another was dismissed and placed under investigation.

In a written response to questions, Viktor Khrekov, the property department’s spokesman, said he could not comment on whether the shake-up was related to Mr. Sedelmayer’s case. He acknowledged that the German businessman “had managed to get his demands satisfied in part,” but added that Russia had “from the start considered and still considers the actions of F. Sedelmayer as unlawful” and would keep fighting against his “judicial blackmail.”

From the beginning, Mr. Sedelmayer said, he tried arbitration and negotiation. Rebuffed in his demands for compensation, he took his case to courts across Europe. Russia in turn put up ferocious resistance, court documents show.

It took nearly two decades, but as a result, instead of getting $2.3 million from Russia in accordance with a 1998 ruling in his favor by a Stockholm arbitration panel, Mr. Sedelmayer has received around $6.8 million. (Moscow agreed to arbitration under a 1989 investment treaty between the Soviet Union and West Germany that mandated compensation for expropriated assets.) The money, which includes $2.3 million paid in December, came from the sale of six Russian-owned buildings in Cologne, Germany, that a German court ordered put up for auction to cover the Stockholm award, plus hefty interest, that Moscow had for years refused to honor.

Mr. Sedelmayer, who now runs an asset recovery company that advises clients on how to settle international disputes, also forced the sale of a Russian trade mission building in Sweden for $1.5 million but Moscow filed a complaint claiming that the sale violated international law, delaying distribution of part of the proceeds to Mr. Sedelmayer.

“It makes no sense, but they just don’t give up, even if it only hurts them more,” Mr. Sedelmayer said, referring to a blizzard of countersuits by Moscow in an effort to reverse its losses. “They are still going now.”