Both sides claim victory in European Court’s Yukos ruling
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of a claim by Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s now-defunct oil company Yukos, but deffered on the quesiton of payment: According to the ruling from the court in Strasbourg, Russian authorities were unfair in punishing the company over tax violations and did not give Yukos enough time to ...
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of a claim by Mikhail Khodorkovsky's now-defunct oil company Yukos, but deffered on the quesiton of payment:
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of a claim by Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s now-defunct oil company Yukos, but deffered on the quesiton of payment:
According to the ruling from the court in Strasbourg, Russian authorities were unfair in punishing the company over tax violations and did not give Yukos enough time to prepare its defence.
The ruling is open to an appeal process that is available to both sides.
Yukos sought £62bn ($98bn) in damages, the largest claim in the court’s 50-year history and one of Russia’s biggest legal challenges to date. The company – a major Russian taxpayer whose primary subsidiary once produced as much oil as Libya – was dismantled by Russian authorities after the 2003 arrest of its founder and owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. His supporters say the Kremlin mounted an orchestrated effort to destroy a tycoon who was seen as a threat to the then President Vladimir Putin’s rule.[…]
The European court found the question of damages "is not ready for decision" and gave both parties three months to reach a settlement. If they don’t, the court will rule at a later date on whether to order any damages.
The court found that the Russian government violated Yukos’s right to a fair trial, but dismissed a claim that it had misused legal procedures. Both sides are spinning the verdict:
Russia’s envoy to the court, Georgy Matyushkin, told the Interfax news agency he was "satisfied with the ruling overall".
Mikhail Barshchevsky, the Kremlin representative at Russian high courts, told RIA Novosti that the Strasbourg court’s rejection of political motivation is "an indisputable victory for Russian envoys in the court". Yukos representatives said they consider the ruling a victory.
Earlier this week, Russia’s supreme court ruled that Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were illegally held for three months during their second trial.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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