FEBRUARY 16, 2015
A Dutch court ruled Wednesday that Russia’s Rosneft must pay the now
defunct Yukos International damages tied to the freezing of its accounts
in 2008.
Yukos is asking for $333 million to cover losses incurred after its
accounts were frozen plus costs and interests, the Russian Times said.
Yukos International said it suffered damages after an Amsterdam court
seized its bank account in 2008 following the bankruptcy and
liquidation of its parent company Yukos.
The court did not rule on how much Rosneft will pay in compensation.
“As for the amount [of compensation], the judge ruled that the issue
should be considered separately,” a court representative told TASS.
In July the Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled that Rosneft must
pay Yukos shareholders $50 billion for expropriating the company’s
assets.
The Russian government is appealing the ruling.
Yukos operated from 1993 to 2007 and was declared bankrupt in 2006
after incurring $500 million in debt with a foreign bank syndicate.
The debt was later purchased by Rosneft and the company’s assets were auctioned off in 2007.
Russian officials maintained that the Yukos seizure was purely a tax matter.
However, the move was widely seen as a politically motivated attack on Yukos’s CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Khodokovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, were jailed on charges of fraud and tax evasion in 2003.
Khodorkovsky served nine years in prison before receiving a pardon from Russian president Vladimir Putin.