Yukos

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Yukos

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Seat Moscow , Russia

A Yukos gas station in Moscow

Yukos ( Russian Юкос , German Yukos ) was one of the major corporations of Russia for oil production and petrochemical industry and was one of the world's largest non-governmental groups. After the company's founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested in 2003, the company ran into financial difficulties, which resulted in Yukos being declared bankrupt by a Moscow court on August 1, 2006 .

The usual in international economic life English name Yukos is an acronym of the companies that were involved in the founding of the oil company, " YU ganskneftegaz" and " K uybyshevnefte O rg S intez" ( We need your ганскнефтегаз, К уйбышевнефте О рг С интез; JU ganskneftegas, K uibyschewnefte O rg S intes ).

The enterprise

Yukos has been headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky , a politically active billionaire , for the past few years . The company held second place in the market until Khodorkovsky's arrest in October 2003.

The arrest and restrictive measures taken by the Kremlin have made the group known internationally, but it has also run into economic difficulties. Like the manager Platon Lebedev, Khodorkovsky was accused of tax offenses. Both were sentenced to several years in prison. The real reasons are believed to be that Khodorkovsky, who is one of Russia's “ oligarchs ”, was proposed as a presidential candidate or because the Russian government wanted to bring the company into its sphere of influence (as it did before). President Putin had also spoken out negatively about Yukos' support for educational institutions and the mass media . The reason for this is that the promotion of political pluralism, as well as the diversity of opinion and media, is not in line with Putin's efforts. In particular, the entry of US investors into the Russian market through Yukos is assumed to be the reason for the state intervention.

Yukos was sold by the government under controversial circumstances in the course of the great wave of privatization after the dissolution of the Soviet Union . The acquisition took place as part of a closed auction, which was organized by the Bank Menatep co-founded by Khodorkovsky , which was then the only bidder itself. Menatep had itself become a financially strong private bank in the years before, as Khodorkovsky, as deputy oil and energy minister under Boris Yeltsin , had given her numerous orders to manage investment programs. Yukos later went to a group of international investors. The main shareholder was Khodorkovsky.

Western economists on the one hand valued the flexibility and profitability of the group, but also accused it of a dubious policy towards the small shareholders. This is said to have improved from around 2001. In recent years, Yukos has seen sales increases of 30 to 104 percent and profit margins of up to 50 percent and has become a magnet for the stock markets , not only in Russia (2000: 9.8 billion US dollars). Substantial investments have been made in the energy sector:

Yukos' daily oil production was around 1.7 million barrels , which is over 15 percent of total Russian oil production.

In July 2006, the chairman of the board, Steven Theede, announced his resignation as of August 1, 2006. He justified this with the insolvency proceedings, which were a farce. According to Western observers, the aim of the Russian government, which together with the state-owned oil company Rosneft owns 100 percent of the company, was to dissolve and integrate it into Rosneft. On August 1, 2006, a Moscow court ruled that the company was bankrupt and decided to wind up Yukos.

The "Yukos Case"

Breaking up of the group

In April 2003, Yukos agreed a merger with Sibneft, since June 2006 Gazprom Neft , which at that time was the fifth largest company in terms of sales in Russia. The merger did not take place as a result of the aftermath of Khodorkovsky's arrest. At the end of October 2003, the government froze 44 percent of the shares in order to prevent them from being taken over by a group of investors cooperating with Khodorkovsky.

Since then, the profitability of Yukos has continuously declined, which was all the more noticeable after the strong growth of recent years. The price fell by up to 80 percent compared to the annual average of around 40 euros, which adversely affected all Russian stock exchanges . In early 2004 there were rumors of insolvency and the suspicion that the restrictions would lead to bankruptcy and a cheap purchase by the state.

On May 31, 2004, a Moscow arbitration tribunal declared the additional issue of Yukos securities intended for the merger with Sibneft null and void, whereby the group lost the right to 57.5 percent of Sibneft shares. The following June, Gazprom , the world's largest natural gas producer , announced that it would acquire Yukos assets if auctioned .

On June 29, 2004, the tax back payments amounting to the equivalent of 2.8 billion euros for the year 2000 were legally confirmed and thus legally binding. Bailiffs initiated enforcement proceedings after the judgment. According to their decision, the company had to pay this amount by the end of August 2004. The tax liability for 2001 was also the equivalent of 2.8 billion euros. For 2002 and 2003, claims were made in roughly the same amount. The company offered to make a payment of one billion euros upon waiver of the balance. The Russian Ministry of Finance insisted on paying the entire tax debt. This was followed by an enforcement procedure in which the tax authorities ranked above the donors and the suppliers in the ranking of the creditors. At the direction of the bailiffs, the four Yukos development companies had to stop selling other assets with immediate effect. However, the extraction, processing and sale of oil could continue.

On December 19, 2004, Yuganskneftegas was auctioned for seven billion euros to settle the tax debt of the past few years. Yuganskneftegas accounted for around 60 percent of all Yukos oil production. Yukos executives had announced days before that they would sue the potential buyer in international courts. The Yukos managers in had Texas Houston bankruptcy protection to Chapter 11 requested the bankruptcy law of the United States. At the auction in which v. a. the Baikalfinanzgruppe and Gazprom, the latter was awarded the contract and thus took over three quarters of the core business of Yukos.

Three days later, the Baikal finance group was completely taken over by the Russian state oil company Rosneft .

Legal processing

Action before the ECHR

Former Yukos owners sued the European Court of Human Rights for alleged discrimination against the group through the tax procedures of the Russian state. They asked for US $ 98 billion in damages. The lawsuit was partially dismissed in September 2011 with the possibility of appeal . A violation of the ban on discrimination was not found. There is no evidence that Russia has misused the tax proceedings against Yukos to destroy the company and bring all of the group's assets under its control. However, the Court saw the manner in which the tax debts were collected between 2000 and 2003 as "disproportionate" and as a violation of the protection of property, even if the authorities had all acted on a legal basis. In order to give the parties the possibility of an amicable settlement, the Court of Justice decided not to fix damages. After no such agreement was reached, the damages to be paid by Russia were set in July 2014 at 1.9 billion euros, the highest sum ever granted for a human rights violation. However, according to a decision of the Russian Constitutional Court on July 14, 2015, the judgment can not be enforced in Russia.

Arbitration

The arbitration claims of three shareholders, who recently held over 70% of the shares in Yukos, were more successful before an arbitration tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. In an arbitration on July 18, 2014, they were awarded 50 billion dollars (37.2 billion euros), which the Russian government has to pay by the beginning of 2015 at the latest. The arbitrators were the Swiss Charles Poncet (named by the plaintiffs), the American and former President of the International Court of Justice Stephen M. Schwebel (named by Russia) and as chairman of the Canadians L. Yves Fortier (named by the Secretary General of the Permanent Court of Arbitration) . The suing Yukos shareholders are intermediate companies based in the European tax havens of Cyprus and the Isle of Man , which have thus benefited from the protection of the European Energy Charter. The arbitral tribunal found that these intermediate companies belonged to Russian nationals and that the shares were very likely held in trust for Russian nationals.

The decision is based on the investment protection and arbitration rules of the Energy Charter Treaty of 1998. Russia signed but not ratified the treaty, recognized the judgment and did not pay. As a result, accounts of Russian diplomatic missions in Belgium were blocked in June 2015. They were released after a Russian protest.

The judgments of the arbitral tribunal were overturned on April 20, 2016 by a state court in The Hague.

The Hague Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on February 18, 2020. The awards from 2014 are now back in force.

be right

The lawyer of the former majority shareholder of the Russian oil company Yukos, Robert R. Amsterdam , called Chancellor Gerhard Schröder a “mafioso” after the auction of Yuganskneftega's because he and Deutsche Bank tolerated violations of the law in Russia in the interests of German corporations .

Numerous members of the Bundestag, including the former German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger , pointed out that Yukos had been crushed by a government that was ready to use every instrument in its power to assert its interests.

On December 28, 2004, the Russian presidential adviser Andrei Illarionov declared at a press conference that the Yukos case was the "2004 affair".

literature

  • Heiko Pleines and Hans-Henning Schröder (editors): The Yukos affair - Russia's energy industry and politics . Working papers and materials No. 64 of the Research Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen, June 2005, second, updated edition; ISSN  1616-7384 ; Print version
  • Angela Rustemeyer: Putin's oligarch campaign and Russia's democracy; the Yukos affair and its environment in the eyes of the politically liberal opposition and the population , Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2004, ISBN 3-89892-319-3 ( digitized , PDF file; 234 kB).
  • Report: The Yukos Affair, its Motives and Implications ( Memento from December 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), Center for Eastern Studies English from page 33 (PDF file; 302 kB)

Individual references and web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 21, 2006, p. 17
  2. ↑ The Court of Justice sees no wrong in the Yukos trial ( Memento of May 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), published on ftd.de , September 20, 2011
  3. ↑ European court rules Russia must pay Yukos shareholders 1.9 billion euros , reuters.com, July 31, 2014
  4. ↑ Yukos break up: Russia sentenced to $ 50 billion in damages. Spiegel online, July 28, 2014, accessed June 27, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from July 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ The 50 billion Yukos judgment - and the risks for Germany , Manager Magazin of October 31, 2014
  7. ↑ Michael Stabenow: Dispute about Yukos. Belgium releases Russian accounts again , FAZ from June 21, 2015
  8. ↑ Unexpected success for Moscow in the Yukos case.
  9. ^ Court reinstates order for Russia to pay $ 50 billion over Yukos . Associated Press . February 18, 2020.