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The Russian government realizes the fact that it has to hand over $50 billion in assets to former shareholders of oil giant Yukos, important things that emerged this week in a US court.
Russia has been on the defensive after a race before foreign courts that have ruled in favor of shareholders, which claim to have suffered an “illegal expropriation in their investment.”
The long-standing dispute dates back to the early years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency and his fights with Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for his great asset, Yukos Oil. In August 2006, a Russian court declared Yukos bankrupt after a three-year war over an unpaid tax bill. Rosneft, backed by the state, Yukos’s chief creditor, took control, marking the birth of a foreign melodrama from the courtroom that has now arrived in the United States.
After a chain of two-way rulings, the Hague Court of Appeal in the Netherlands reinstated a 201four ruling in February that awarded former shareholders $50 billion, annulling a 2016 ruling through the Hague District Court (for Russia) to obtain some rewards. In an effort to raise the $50 billion, lawyers from former shareholders are seeking to unload Russian-owned assets in the United States through a U.S. court case.
On Monday, the Russian Federation filed an application with the District Court for the District of Columbia to increase the suspension of similar disputes filed in the United States and protect its assets until its final appeal is heard through a Dutch court.
Washington, D.C., has become a new front probably high for this likely Russian top dispute because Yukos shareholders are calling for a redress to implement the ruling following the Hague Court of Appeals decision in February. If successful, Yukos’ former shareholders can resume their efforts to capture Russian state assets in the United States to meet the $50 billion reward.
In May, former shareholders celebrated their first victory with the seizure of $50 billion (which Reuters said rose to $57 billion after additional sanctions) after winning a legal war over the trademark rights of two known vodkas. lopasses – Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya – from the Russian government. Aleven, although vodka does not appear to have a large apple directly connected to oil, the lawyers of the former shareholders are large apple assets belonging to the Russian Federation, which adds pass rights to the country’s favorite drink.
Tim Osborne, managing director of GML Limited, the former new holding company, said: “As long as the Russian Federation does not easily condition foreign courts that revel in finding it responsible, capture the Russian state’s assets in accordance with the law. The attachment of brands to the Netherlands is just the beginning ».
In court this week, Russia is fighting the potential loss of more assets, it is not easy for seizures to be logical at least until the “last final results of Dutch proceedings” are determined. In describing the legal scenario provided as “unknown and uncertain”, Russia declares that the Dutch judgment of February 2020 is based on “unprecedented legal conclusions” and should be reviewed through the Dutch Supreme Court.
According to reports, a GML spokesman, Yukos’ former majority shareholder, only told Forbes, “We are preparing our reaction and will take it to court on July 8.”
Russia has defied the authority of foreign courts over their domestic industries. In 2017, the Russian Constitutional Court rejected a separate ruling through the Huguy European Court of Rights (ECtHR) on a reimbursement payment of 1.866 billion euros ($2 billion) for Yukos’s former leadership, saying the case violated the Russian Constitution and could also simply not be enforced. Putin has proposed ending the mandate indirectly to prioritize Russian law on foreign obligations.
The Russian embassy in London responds to a request for comment.
War is the ultimate bankruptcy and the most powerful friend of final bankruptcy in the dispute between Putin and Khodorkovsky, who took over Yukos in 1996 for an estimated $3 hundred million. Yukos’s adventure to become a state asset began after the debatable tycoon was charged with tax evasion and theft and was imprisoned in 2004.
The dispute between Putin and Khodorkovsky began in 2003, after Khodorkovsky clashed with Putin in a televised assembly in the Kremlin, implying that h8 government officials accepted millions of bribes.
Arrested on the asphalt of an airport runway, Khodorkovsky charged with tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud. In two hundred and four, he delivered the lok in court and in two hundred and five convicted on six of the seven counts and sentenced to eight years in prison. In December 2010, just before his release, Khodorkovsky was convicted of embezzlement of more than two hundred million tons of oil and laundering profits, extending his sentence.
However, The Hague ruled in 201four that “The Russian courts bowed to the russian executive government’s willingness to bankrupt Yukos, cede its assets to a state-controlled comparative apple [Rosneft], and imprison a guy [Mikhail Khodorkovsky] who has symptoms given of becoming a competitive politician.” Aleven, while having no known economic merit to Khodorkovsky, the verdict fueled Putin’s war for Yukos and Russian oil to the world stage.
Since 2005, the opposite combat against Yukos has taken place through Leonid Nevzlin, Khodorkovsky’s former partner, who said in February, following the decision: “We are in a position of war … Now we can begin a large-scale asset seizure.” identified as the valuables of the Russian state. »
Nevzlin has the maximum to win, as it owns about 70% GML, according to Reuters. (According to Yukos’ former majority shareholders, Khodorkovsky relinquished his shares in 200 years with the purported goal of saving the apple from the acquisition.) After the initial resolution of The Hague in 2014, Nevzlin told the Russian opposition television channel Dozhd: “My attitude [towards resolution] is a total satisfaction.” He added: “Fifty billion dollars is never so many coins for Russia that they can’t afford.”
This week, in D.C. court, the Russian government argued that the “risk” that Russian assets seized through former Yukos shareholders will never be returned to the executive if the Dutch Supreme Court overturns the $50 billion ruling is “exacerbated” through what they describe as “the currency laundering activities of Russian oligarchs” , resulting in Yukos’ former shareholders knowing how to hide assets once they have acquired them, making them unimaginable to recover.
Politically, it is widely believed that Putin won his war against Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest tycoon in the early 2000s. As Khodorkovsky was released from prison in December 2013, as the 201 Sochi Olympics approached and a deep controversy was approaching in Ukraine, the former billionaire saw it widely as a depleted force.
However, in this rather Russian game of thrones, times have been repositioned. Putin faces an era of public unpopularity for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which also forced the withdrawal and repositioning of Russia’s constitution, allowing him to postpone two more terms.
Khodorkovsky, on the other hand, has become a favored public figure among Putin’s top Russian war in the war.
Khodorkovsky, who claimed in a new documentary that has a net charge of approximately $400 million, has an active player in the global debate over Russia. According to documents published through the Foreignlobvia.com website, Khodorkovsky hired Anna Veduta, a former assistant to The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, as an American lobviaist.
In an effort to reassign U.S. lawmakers in Russia, Veduta told foreignlobby.com: “In my new role, the goal is to shape the American public about the movements of Putin’s autocratic and corrupt regime at home and abroad (adding violations to Huguy rights). Efforts for percentages of dissatisfaction in the United States involving contacts with state officials, especially a friend, will have to be recorded when a large Russian-speaking user is mentioned in Washington, D.C., as a possible spy.”
Khodorkovsky remains a thorn in Putin’s side. Putin’s legacy as a guy who beat billionaires has nothing less than a final bankruptcy, with $50 billion at stake.
I am an expert journalist in Forbes, London, which encompasses multimillion-dollar business, philanthropy, investment, tax, generation and lifestyle. I studied goldsmiths,
I am an expert journalist in Forbes, founded in London, covering business, philanthropy, investments, taxes, generation and lifestyle of billionaires. I studied at Goldsmiths, at the University of London, and joined Spear’s Magazine, where I covered everything from the Westminster bubble to the world of wealth management, own banking, divorce law, alternative assets, taxes, generation and heritage. Notable examples come with a survey of Switzerland’s bilateral ties with the European Union and a Bhutan route, which tests the thirst for democracy and love for its king. I joined Forbes in May 2019.