THE HAGUE, February 20. /TASS/. Russia can appeal the decision of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal in the Yukos case to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, press secretary of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, Melissa Zijlstra told TASS.
"Yes, Russia can still appeal to the Supreme Court on this particular point [regarding the fraud]. Other grounds to set aside the rulings had been definitively rejected earlier in the proceedings," she said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal dismissed Russia’s appeal on the Yukos case, within which the Russian side tried to invalidate the decision of international arbitrators compelling the Russian side to pay over $50 bln to the company’s former shareholders.
According to the court, Russia’s claim that the former Yukos shareholders committed fraud during the arbitration proceedings were not submitted on time. However, even if Russia had brought the fraud accusations forward in time, this could not have been used as a reason to cancel the arbitration awards, the court believes.
In 2014, international arbitration, established through the mediation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, after 10 years of consideration of the case, ordered Russia to pay more than $50 billion to companies linked with former Yukos shareholders Yukos Universal, Hulley Enterprises and Veteran Petroleum.
This verdict was appealed in a Dutch court. In November 2021, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands upheld the cassation appeal of the Russian Federation on one point - that the former Yukos shareholders committed fraud during the arbitration proceedings - and remitted the matter to the Amsterdam Court of Appeal. The Amsterdam Court of Appeal has now ruled that this complaint cannot serve as grounds for setting aside the arbitrator’s decision. Complaints on other points, including those relating to the interpretation of the provisions of the Energy Charter Treaty, were rejected, and the decisions on them were recognized as final.
Yukos case
Yukos, once Russia’s largest oil firm, was accused of tax crimes and declared bankrupt by a Russian court ruling in 2006 while its assets were sold at auction during the liquidation procedure.
In 2007, former Yukos shareholders filed a lawsuit with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague claiming that the Russian government had expropriated Yukos’s assets and demanding compensation for losses under Article 45 of Europe’s Energy Charter Treaty.