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The state oil giant loses an appeal over some $420 million in arbitration awards granted to a former Yukos unit.
The Dutch Supreme Court denied the right to appeal in a case relating to 13 billion rubles ($420 million) of arbitration awards granted to a former subsidiary of defunct oil firm Yukos, a court spokeswoman said Friday.
"The Supreme Court cannot hear the appeal because it has no jurisdiction," a spokeswoman for the court said.
In April 2009, the Amsterdam Court of Appeals ruled that Russian court decisions that annulled the awards could not be recognized.
The spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, the Netherlands' highest court, said it was not possible to file an appeal with the Supreme Court to overturn the Amsterdam court's decision.
"Its ruling today means that Yukos Capital can now enforce the arbitral awards in the Netherlands," the chief financial officer of Yukos' former subsidiary Yukos Capital, Bruce Misamore, said in a statement.
Rosneft was not immediately available for comment. Shares in the company closed down 1.1 percent in Moscow, in line with the MICEX Index.
The awards related to loans Yukos Capital made to Yuganskneftegaz, or YNG, in 2004, which were subsequently defaulted upon, Yukos said in a statement.
YNG had been Yukos Oil Company's principal production subsidiary but was acquired by state-run Rosneft in 2004.
Yukos Capital said it also has an ongoing case in English courts for claims against Rosneft for the arbitral awards, which it secured in Moscow in September 2006.
Russia dissolved Yukos, once the country's largest oil producer, in 2007 after hounding the company for massive back-tax claims.
“Rosneft will examine the court’s decision as soon as it gets a written copy,” said Nikolai Manvelov, a spokesman for Rosneft in Moscow.
(Reuters, Bloomberg)
