The Silk Road Fund Co., Ltd., an investment fund to finance China-proposed "Belt and Road" initiatives, on Thursday bought 9.9 percent of shares of an liquefied natural gas project from Russian company Novatek.
Novatek owned 60 percent of the Yamal Peninsula-based project's shares before the purchase, while French company Total and China National Petroleum Corporation held 20 percent of its shares respectively.
In total, the three companies had invested over 10 billion U.S. dollars on the project.
The purchase is the Silk Road Fund's first investment in Russia.
China has earmarked 40 billion U.S. dollars for the Silk Road Fund to support infrastructure projects along both routes of "the Silk Road Economic Belt" and "the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road".
