LONDON — Russia has been ordered to pay more than $50 billion for expropriating what was once the country’s largest oil producer, Yukos, in a court ruling that said President Vladimir Putin’s government used tax claims to destroy the company and its CEO, a political opponent.
Monday’s verdict by the Permanent Court for Arbitration increases the economic and diplomatic isolation of Russia at a time when it faces new, potentially painful sanctions from Western powers.
The court, a body that rules on corporate disputes, said the Russian government owes the money — a huge sum, even for such an oil-rich nation— to the former majority shareholders in Yukos Oil Co.
Moscow vowed to fight the decision, raising the prospect of a new round of legal battles as the shareholders seek to enforce the decision by seizing Russian state-owned assets in 150 countries around the world.
The court said Russia had used tax claims to take control of Yukos in 2003 and silence its CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an opponent of Putin who had begun to use his vast wealth to fund opposition parties challenging Putin’s power. Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint as he boarded a plane in Siberia that year and spent more than a decade in prison as Yukos’ main assets were sold to a state-owned company. Yukos ultimately went bankrupt.
