Russia wins $50 bln ruling in decade-old fight with Yukos – Bloomberg

Wednesday, April 20, 2016 - 13:58 (EEST) Section: Latest news

Russia succeeded in its battle to overturn a $50 billion arbitration ruling after a Dutch court ruled that the panel of judges who issued the record-setting award to the former owners of Yukos Oil Co. had no right to review the dispute, Bloomberg wrote.
The ruling by a court in the Hague Wednesday was a sweeping victory for the country in its more than decade-old fight with the founders of what was once Russia`s biggest oil company. The court said that the arbitration tribunal misinterpreted a treaty that Russia signed, but never ratified, according to a copy of the judgment, according to Bloomberg.
The decision may free up accounts and property belonging to state companies that were frozen while GML Ltd., a holding company belonging to four former Yukos owners, attempted to collect the award. Russia`s legal team will file a motion to overturn asset seizures in Belgium and France, said Andrey Kondakov, the general director of the International Center for Legal Protection, which is coordinating Russia`s defense.
”This will make Russian companies operating in foreign countries feel more comfortable,” Evgeny Minchenko, head of the International Institute for Political Expertise in Moscow, said by phone. ”It also improves Russia`s image abroad as a whole.”
Yukos was dismantled amid billions of dollars of tax claims that its founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky called revenge by the Kremlin for his funding of opposition parties. He is campaigning in exile for the ouster of President Vladimir Putin, who issued a pardon to free him in 2013 after a decade in prison on convictions for fraud and tax evasion linked to Yukos.
”This is a victory for the rule of law and justice has prevailed,” Kondakov said. ”This is the first time in 20 years that the district court has overturned an arbitration ruling.”
GML said it plans to appeal the decision.
”This will contain the movement in Russia to reject international law because it turns out that it can be beneficial,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a former political adviser to Putin, said by phone. ”At the same time, this solution should soften the image of a hostile West.”