Rosneft sued RBC

Rosneft reported that it filed a lawsuit against RBC for the protection of business reputation in connection with a publication entitled “Ryazan private security company received a share in the former Venezuelan project of Rosneft.”

Now this publication dated May 14 has a different title: “Roszarubezhneft received the former Venezuelan asset of Rosneft through a private security company.”

The oil company believes that “this statement” “misled the public, market representatives and regulators”, since the true essence of the deal was the complete cessation of Rosneft’s activities in Venezuela with their sale and transfer to the control of a company owned by the Russian Federation.

• Rosneft writes that the editors of RBC “used a provocative statement, creating the impression of shamness of the previously announced deal about the complete withdrawal of Rosneft from business in Venezuela, provoking a wave of disinformation in the print and electronic media.”

• Rosneft claims that the editorial board of RBC refused to refute the “provocative information” and make a public apology. She believes that this information disorients the market and causes it “significant material damage.”

• An official representative of RBC told The Bell that the publication is based solely on official documents and the publication is ready to defend its position. “RBC has not yet received Rosneft’s claim; as soon as the documents arrive, we will be able to comment on their content from a legal point of view,” the publication said in a statement .

What you need to know about the sale of Venezuelan assets

Interfax was the first to draw attention to the structure of the transaction for the sale of the National Oil Consortium (NOC), through which Rosneft owned a large production asset in Venezuela. Based on data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the agency wrote that the owner of 80% of NNK was LLC Private Security Enterprise RN-Okhrana-Ryazan. At the end of April, this private security company became the property of the state-owned Roszarubezhneft.

An RBC article published on the same day contained a detailed comment from Rosneft that all of Rosneft's assets and operations in Venezuela had been sold, closed or liquidated.

In March, amid US sanctions, Rosneft announced that it was divesting its assets in Venezuela and entering into an agreement with a company 100% owned by the Russian government. In exchange, the company received 9.6% of its own shares. After this, it became known that the Federal Property Management Agency established Roszarubezhneft just on the day Rosneft announced its withdrawal from Venezuela.

Rosneft seriously entered Venezuela under Sechin and in recent years has built relations with it on forward contracts (we wrote in detail about the company’s activities in Venezuela here ). This gave the company the opportunity to continue supplying oil from the country even under sanctions, citing previously concluded agreements, and repay most of the debt. However, earlier this year, the United States successively imposed sanctions against two Rosneft traders for assisting the regime of Nicolas Maduro.

What you need to know about Rosneft's claims against the media

This is not the first time that Rosneft is suing RBC: in 2016, a gigantic claim for 3.179 billion rubles was filed not only against the publication itself, but also against the authors of the article that caused the company’s claims.

Rosneft did not like the publication “Sechin asked the government to protect Rosneft from BP,” the key statement of which was that in preparation for the privatization of 19.5% of Rosneft, the head of the company, Igor Sechin, proposed obliging the potential buyer not to enter into a shareholder agreement with BP , to prevent the collection of a blocking package. The company estimated the lost goodwill at 3 billion rubles, but the deal was ultimately successful.

During the trial, the amount of compensation that threatened RBC with bankruptcy was reduced to 390 thousand rubles, and then the parties agreed to a settlement agreement. As a result, RBC published a message of apology on behalf of management and journalists.

Sechin’s lawsuit against Vedomosti dates back to 2016 for the publication “Sechin builds a nest in Barvikha.” The court ruled that the publication violated the right to protection of privacy, and it was removed from the publication’s website. In the same year, Sechin won a lawsuit against Novaya Gazeta, forcing it to remove a publication suggesting that the head of Rosneft could allegedly be the owner or lessee of a luxury yacht, the cost of which is many times higher than his annual salary.

In 2014, Sechin filed a lawsuit against the Russian Forbes, its publisher, as well as against Komsomolskaya Pravda for the top 25 heads of Russian companies by income, in which the head of Rosneft took first place with $50 million. Sechin won the lawsuit, a refutation was published in 2015.

Also dating back to 2014 is Sechin’s trial with Vedomosti regarding Kirill Kharatyan’s column alleging that the Rosneft top manager allegedly makes decisions for the state. The publication also lost this trial, but a refutation was published with fragments of information recognized as discrediting the honor, dignity and business reputation of Sechin.