Seven years have passed since Russia began the campaign against OAO Yukos Oil Company that led to the renationalization of a business controlling more than 3 percent of world oil production, comparable in scale to Chevron Corporation. The dispossessed owners call it the biggest political expropriation in history. The fall of Yukos has generated history’s biggest arbitrations—and by far the biggest human rights claim ever—with stakes as high as $100 billion. The director of the majority shareholder group, Timothy Osborne, vowed a “lifetime of litigation” against those responsible, and he is well on his way.
So far, the litigation is going well for the Yukos side. The company’s former management or shareholders have prevailed in jurisdictional fights in four different cases—most recently, with a surprise victory late last year at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Now the real battle begins. In March, in a second case, the main parties finally engaged on the merits at oral hearing before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. That court is expected to render its judgment imminently. While the damages in Strasbourg are unlikely to be substantial, the decision could influence the arbitration in The Hague—where a jackpot judgment is easily imagined. (Collecting such a judgment is another matter.) And the impending human rights ruling in Strasbourg may be crucial to the more realistic hidden strategy of the former Yukos management behind the ECHR claim.
