A Dutch appeals court has reinstated an international arbitration panel’s order to Russia to pay $50 billion compensation to shareholders in former Russian oil giant Yukos
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A Dutch appeals court on Tuesday reinstated an international arbitration panel’s order to Russia to pay $50 billion compensation to shareholders in former Russian oil giant Yukos.
The ruling overturned a 2016 decision by The Hague District court that quashed the compensation order on the grounds that the arbitration panel did not have jurisdiction because the case was based on an energy treaty that Russia had signed but not ratified.
The Hague Court of Appeal ruled that the 2016 decision “was not correct. That means that the arbitration order is in force again.”
The decision, a major defeat for Moscow, can be appealed to the Dutch Supreme Court.
There was no immediate reaction from the shareholders.
The arbitration panel had ruled that Moscow seized control of Yukos in 2003 by hammering the company with massive tax claims. The move was seen as an attempt to silence Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin.
The 2014 arbitration ruling said that Russia was not acting in good faith when it levied the massive claims against Yukos, even though some of the company’s tax arrangements might have been questionable.
The state launched “a full assault on Yukos and its beneficial owners in order to bankrupt Yukos and appropriate its assets while, at the same time, removing Mr. Khodorkovsky from the political arena,” the arbitrators said.
Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint as he boarded a plane in Siberia in 2003 and spent more than a decade in prison as Yukos’ main assets were sold to a state-owned company. Yukos ultimately went bankrupt.
