| YUKOS shareholders are confident that they served the claim on Alexei Kudrin American minority shareholders of Yukos continue to harass Russian officials visiting the States. At the end of last week, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin became a victim of the shareholders of the disgraced company. Representatives of minority shareholders say they have served Mr. Kudrin with a claim for compensation for damage caused to them by the collapse of Yukos. Representatives of the minister claim that he did not receive such documents and call the actions of the minority shareholders disinformation.
In October it became known that 12 minority shareholders of YUKOS filed a lawsuit in a Washington court. The plaintiffs include 11 individuals (one a Dutch citizen, the rest American), as well as a Cayman Islands-registered company, FCT America Limited, headquartered in Chicago. As defendants, the minority shareholders named Gazprom and its head Alexei Miller, Rosneft and its president Sergei Bogdanchikov, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Igor Sechin and a number of other officials, including Alexei Kudrin and the Minister of Industry and Energy Victor Khristenko.
Covigton and Burling lawyer Tom Johnson, representing the interests of minority shareholders, argued that his clients purchased Yukos ADRs between October 2003 and March 2004, after the arrest of the former head of the company, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Then the shareholders sold part of the securities at a price much lower than they bought. The amount of losses, according to minority shareholders, amounted to $3 million. The lawyer calls on other owners of YUKOS shares who suffered from the fall in the holding's quotes to join the lawsuit, estimating their loss at $6 billion. According to YUKOS shareholders, officials and state-owned companies set themselves the goal of nationalizing YUKOS without compensation for lost funds to its owners. The defendants are charged with violating key property laws, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and securities laws.
In October, when Mr. Khristenko was in Washington, they tried to serve him with a lawsuit filed shortly before. According to eyewitnesses, the minister was approached by a man who refused to identify himself and handed over an unmarked folder. The minister did not accept it, then the unknown person literally shoved the folder under the official’s arm and left. The folder fell to the floor. After this, the minority shareholders stated that they handed Mr. Khristenko the documents, but representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Energy do not agree with this.
Now history has repeated itself with Mr. Kudrin arriving in Washington for a meeting with US Treasury Secretary John Snow. The plaintiffs' lawyer told The Financial Times that the contractor he hired served the Russian minister with the lawsuit at the US Treasury building. From which it follows that the executor made his way into the protected territory of the treasury and did his job before the meeting between Alexei Kudrin and John Snow. However, the Ministry of Finance objects to this version. “I was with the minister all the time,” says his press secretary Gennady Yezhov, “nobody handed him anything.” Mr. Yezhov is confident that the ultimate goal of the minority shareholders is not to get their money back, but “to create maximum informational reasons so that newspapers will write about YUKOS.” “We say this is disinformation. Their lawyers will have to prove that the claim was served,” says Mr. Yezhov.
In addition to the already mentioned Russian officials, minority shareholders demand that the first vice-president of Rosneft Nikolai Borisenko, members of the board of directors of Gazprom Farit Gazizulin and Igor Yusufov, Gazpromneft, which participated in the competition for the sale of the Yukos subsidiary Yuganskneftegaz, be brought as defendants. as well as Baikalfinancegroup, which won the competition. As for Mr. Kudrin, he will have at least one more visit to the United States in the foreseeable future - to the financial G-7 meeting in April. Denis REBROV, Mikhail VOROBIEV |
|
