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.
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 owners of what was once Russia’s biggest oil
company. The court said that the arbitration panel misinterpreted a
treaty that Russia signed, but never ratified, according to a copy of
the judgment.
The decision may free up accounts and property
belonging to state companies targeted by GML Ltd., a holding company
belonging to four former Yukos owners, in attempts 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.”
Ruling Overturned
Yukos was
dismantled amid billions of dollars of tax claims that its former chief
Mikhail Khodorkovsky called revenge by the Kremlin for his funding of
opposition parties. He is campaigning in exile for the ouster of
Vladimir Putin. The Russian president issued a pardon to free
Khodorkovsky 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.”
The decision showed that the West has decided to ease pressure on Russia, Khodorkovsky said on his Twitter account.
GML
plans to appeal the decision, GML director Tim Osborne said on a
conference call. The shareholders will continue enforcement proceedings
for the tribunal’s award despite the ruling, which misapplied the laws
governing the treaty, he said.
Coming Battles
The Kremlin
is prepared for battles to continue. “We fully understand that this is
not the end of the story,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “We are
talking about a judicial process. I wouldn’t want to politicize it.”
The
finding in favor of Russia runs counter to some arguments by hardliners
who want the Kremlin should abandon values championed by Europe and the
U.S. The Yukos case is an example of an information war against Russia,
Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee,
wrote in an article in Kommersant-Vlast magazine Monday.
“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.”
No comments:
Post a Comment