A Dutch court has quashed a $50 billion award that Russia had been ordered to pay the former majority shareholders of the dismantled oil giant Yukos.
The Hague District Court ruled on April 20 that an international arbitration panel had misinterpreted a treaty that Russia signed but never ratified and wasn’t qualified to issue the award to Yukos’s former owners.
The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in 2014 that Moscow used tax claims to seize control of Yukos in 2003 and silence its CEO, tycoon-turned-Kremlin-critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
A number of countries have frozen accounts and property belonging to Russian state companies while GML, a holding company belonging to four former Yukos owners, attempted to collect the award.
EXPLAINER: The Yukos Ruling -- How We Got Here
The Kremlin welcomed the decision and expressed hope that it will see proceedings in various countries to freeze Russian assets over the case ended.
GML, a holding company belonging to four former Yukos owners, vowed to continue their legal battle for compensation and to appeal the ruling.
