Russia and EU: Russia to retaliate over Yukos overseas asset freeze

State accounts frozen in Belgium, assets blocked in France.

MOSCOW: Moscow has threatened to retaliate against state-linked foreign firms operating in Russia after its official assets in Western Europe were frozen over legal claims by former Yukos oil company shareholders.

Officials said state accounts had been frozen in Belgium and assets were also blocked in France.

The former shareholders are trying to collect some of the record $50 billion (€44 billion) in compensation awarded to them by an arbitration court last year for the way Russia seized and dismantled the company after arresting Yukos owner and prominent Kremlin critic, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003.

But President Vladimir Putin stressed that “Russia does not recognise the authority of this court” and vowed instead to defend against the seizures.

The Russian leader did not specify what the legal route entails, but earlier, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russian entities impacted by the moves were preparing to go to court to force the freezing of the assets of foreign companies with government involvement in Russia.

In Belgium, accounts of the Russian embassy in Brussels and representative offices at the European Union and NATO headquarters were among those affected. In France, accounts in around 40 banks were frozen along with eight or nine buildings.

“Russia is working on it. Whoever acts like that has to understand that there will be a counter reaction,” said deputy foreign minister Vasily Nebenzya.

The row came as relations between Russia and the EU sank to a low over the conflict in Ukraine, with the Europeans accusing Moscow of supporting and arming the rebellion in the east of the former Soviet state - a claim that Russia denies.

The Belgian foreign ministry said the seizures had been conducted by bailiffs without the involvement of Belgium’s government, but Moscow dismissed that claim.

State-run bank VTB said that some of the accounts of its affiliate in France had been frozen.

Yukos was once Russia’s biggest oil company, but was broken up after the arrest in 2003 of its owner, the Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky was released in 2013 following a decade in prison after a presidential pardon.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2015.

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