Russian lawmakers are making good on threats to retaliate against foreign
governments that seize Russian property abroad to settle claims brought by
former shareholders of the Yukos oil company, which a European court has ruled
was looted by the Kremlin.
The State Duma, Russia's lower house, published the text of a proposed law
that would provide for "mutuality of jurisdiction immunity," legalese
for allowing tit-for-tat property confiscation against any foreign government
that impounds Russia-owned assets abroad to pay the court-ordered claims.
Yukos was among Russia's most lucrative energy giants until the government,
early in President Vladimir Putin's administration, accused founder and Chief
Executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky of tax evasion.
Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint in 2003 and spent 10 years in prison
before being released in late 2013 as part of a general amnesty before Russia's
hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Most of Yukos' assets were
nationalized and transferred to Rosneft, a competing oil company controlled by
a close Putin ally, and a Moscow court declared Yukos bankrupt in 2006.
Former Yukos shareholders brought suit against the Russian government
seeking compensation, and the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year
that charges against Khodorkovsky and other Yukos executives were politically
motivated and ordered $50 billion in compensation to the dispossessed
shareholders.
Courts in Belgium and France in June authorized the seizure of state-owned
Russian property in those two countries -- including Tass news agency offices
and some Russian diplomats' bank deposits -- to contribute toward the settling
of the shareholders' claims.
Putin cast the court decision as invalid in Russia and vowed to take
retaliatory action against any state that confiscated Russian property to pay
Yukos claims. Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev told a Cabinet meeting last month
that "our state must have a right to impose response restrictions" on
the legal liability for foreign assets in Russia.
Konstantin Dobrynin, a constitutional law expert in the Federation Council
upper house, last month proposed creating a new state agency charged with
"managing risks of possible lawsuits filed by international creditors
against Russia." He expressed concern that the Yukos case and the foreign
courts' willingness to enforce judgments against Russia could set a precedent
and inspire other disgruntled foreign investors to take similar legal action.
The bill posted on the Duma website on Thursday was drafted by the Justice
Ministry and would allow selective elimination of the legal protection
currently accorded to foreign governments for their property in Russia. The
Kremlin leadership has made it clear that the legislation, which would take
effect in January, is in retaliation for the European confiscations of Russian
property.
Neither the court-approved asset seizures in Europe nor those envisioned by
Russia involve embassies or other diplomatic properties, which are protected
from such actions by international treaties.
It was unclear when the vote on the measure would be held, but since the
bill has Putin's backing and the Duma is dominated by loyalists of the United
Russia party, its passage is all but guaranteed if the Kremlin decides to move
it forward.
The Russian Investigative Committee, an FBI-like law enforcement body, in
June reopened a 1998 cold case involving the slaying of a Siberian mayor and
named Khodorkovsky as a suspect. Human rights activists denounced that
move as another politically motivated attempt to discredit Khodorkovsky, a
fierce Kremlin critic who now lives in Switzerland.
Russian agents on Thursday took Khodorkovsky's 82-year-old father in for
questioning. Boris Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Sergei Badamshin, called the summons
"shameless pressure" and an attempt to punish his exiled son.
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