Dutch Supreme Court rejects Russia’s final appeal in $50B Yukos case

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch Supreme Court on Friday rejected a final appeal by Russia against a $50 billion arbitration award to former shareholders of Russian oil giant Yukos, who claimed Moscow deliberately bankrupted the company more than 20 years ago.

The Netherlands’ highest court said the decision marked “a definitive end” to the yearslong legal battle over the arbitration award to former Yukos shareholders, who have long argued that the Kremlin took down the oil company to silence its CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin.

Friday’s ruling upheld a decision last year by judges in Amsterdam to reject Russia’s final legal argument in litigation stemming from a 2014 ruling by a panel of international arbitrators that Moscow seized control of Yukos in 2003 by deliberately crippling the company with huge tax claims.

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, who deliberated in The Hague, said in 2014.

Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint 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.

Tim Osborne, CEO of a holding company called GML that represents the interests of the former majority shareholders, hailed what he called a landmark ruling.

The Supreme Court decision “is not just a historic victory for the shareholders, it also reaffirms the fundamental principle of justice that no state, not even a rogue state like Russia, is above the law,” he said.

He added that “real justice requires successful enforcement, so we will now focus all our efforts on enforcing against Russian state assets worldwide” until “every penny of the award has been clawed back. GML said the amount of the award has risen to more than $65 billion when interest is factored in.