Supreme Court: Yukos case must be over | Financial

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Russia on one objection. The Court of Appeal in The Hague wrongly disregarded the Russians’ argument that the Yukos shareholders had committed fraud in the arbitration procedure.

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The Amsterdam Court of Appeal does have to deal with that objection substantively, according to an explanation of the judgment published Friday morning.

In 2020, the Court of Appeal in The Hague upheld a 2014 arbitration tribunal ruling, requiring the Russian state to pay $50 billion (converted 43 billion euros) to the former Yukos owners. Russia appealed against this.

Surprise

The ruling may come as a surprise, because the Advocate General previously advised the Supreme Court to reject all Russian objections. His advice is often followed.

Yukos, Russia’s largest oil company, went bankrupt in 2006 after billions in tax claims from the Russian government. Yukos boss and Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 and was detained in a penal camp until 2014.

Boris Yeltsin

His co-owners started proceedings in 2005 at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. There they invoked the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), signed by Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin.

Since then, the two sides made their way through Dutch courtrooms. Russia mainly disputes there that three arbitrators in The Hague ever had anything to say about the Yukos case, because the Russian parliament had never ratified the ECT treaty. That objection was rejected by the Supreme Court.

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