Dealing a historic legal blow to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, an arbitration tribunal has held the Russian Federation liable for $50.02 billion for seizing the assets of OAO Yukos Oil Company. The panel held that Russia effectively expropriated Yukos in 2004 without due process or just compensation, in violation of international law.
The men who once controlled Yukos—and its 2 percent of the world’s oil—unveiled the ruling in their favor at a London press conference Monday morning. The July 18 opinion, issued under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, runs to nearly 600 pages and 2,500 footnotes.
