Belgian court goes after Russian assets in
the decade-old Yukos case just as Brussels renews economic sanctions on Moscow
through the rest of the year.
More than a decade after Russia stole the assets of
oil giant Yukos, shareholders of the now-defunct firm may be a feeling a
profound sense of schadenfreude after a Belgian court reportedly ordered the
seizure Wednesday of 1.6 billion euros worth of Russian assets.
The decision would be the first fruit of the largest
arbitration case in history, decided last summer, in which former Yukos shareholders won a
$50 billion settlement against Russia. An international arbitration panel in
The Hague ruled that the dismantling of Yukos beginning in 2003 was politically
motivated. It said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian
officials used a tax dispute to wrangle away Yukos’s assets — and imprison its
then-boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky — to bolster the prospects of other Russian
energy firms run by oligarchs friendlier to the Kremlin. Khodorkovsky was freed
in late 2013 after nearly a decade in jail, including time in Siberia.
In a second blow on what turned into a tough day for
Moscow, the European Union overcame a spate of internal divisions and renewed
economic and financial sanctions on Moscow through next January, an effort to
keep the pressure on the Kremlin while Russia continues to destabilize eastern
Ukraine.
The legal and economic double whammy underscores
Moscow’s increasing isolation as it continues to support pro-Russian rebels in
eastern Ukraine and flout international legal norms elsewhere. The renewal of
sanctions is a sign that Russia’s efforts to sow divisions between European
countries, especially by courting Hungary and Greece, have yet to pay off.
Much about the Belgian ruling remains unclear. Russian
media reported Wednesday that a court had ordered
the seizure of some non-diplomatic Russian assets. The Belgian and Russian
embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Representatives for former Yukos shareholders weren’t immediately available for
comment.
If the initial reports are correct, the Belgian
justices would effectively be hammering Moscow for failing to actually comply
with the ruling from the arbitration panel in The Hague and pay back the money.
That left little recourse for Yukos’s former shareholders other than trying to
get courts around the world to seize Russian state assets when and where they
can. The company representing the former shareholders of Yukos, GML Ltd., is reported to be seeking similar judicial actions in other
countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
and the Netherlands.
Photo credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty
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