Yukos shareholders could look at Warsaw assets

Russian newspaper "RBC" calculates that the Russian Federation holds assets previously owned by former shareholders of Yukos, which was nationalised in the 2000s, worth about USD 5 billion.

French and Belgian bailiffs have already started seizing assets of the Russian Federation in response to a judgment from the Court of Justice in The Hague on 18 July.

Tim Osborne, executive director of the main shareholder GML, and the lawyer representing a group of former shareholders of Yukos, said he will look into Russian assets located in 150 countries. He said there are about 973 objects that could be seized.

Residential, commercial buildings, as well religious buildings are the main assets, with the Russians owning various objects of this type in Warsaw.

Under agreements from the 1970s Poland handed over a number of buildings on attractive plots near the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw. Their status is legally ambiguous and, according to the TVN news channel, the Russian Federation does not pay taxes on these properties.

In April Moscow said that state-linked foreign firms in Russia could be targeted in retaliation for the freezing of Russian official assets in western Europe.

Yukos was once Russia’s biggest oil company, but was broken up after the arrest of its owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003. The court of arbitration in The Hague has ruled that Moscow forced Yukos into bankruptcy with excessive tax claims before selling its assets to state-owned firms. It ordered Russia to pay Yukos shareholders USD 50 billion in compensation. (jh)