Russian officials said state accounts were frozen in Belgium, and representatives of claimants from the defunct oil firm claimed state assets were also blocked in France.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in televised comments that Russian entities affected 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, the Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday.
In France, accounts in about 40 banks were frozen along with eight or nine buildings, Tim Osborne, executive director of the main shareholder GML, told AFP.
“Russia is working on it. What our response will be – time will tell,” the deputy foreign minister, Vasily Nebenzya, told Interfax news agency, adding that “whoever acts like this has to understand that there will be a counter reaction”.
In response to the moves in Belgium, Moscow summoned the Belgian ambassador to explain the action, and threatened “reciprocal measures targeting Belgian assets in Russia”.
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 VTB bank said on Thursday that some of the accounts of its affiliate in France had been frozen.
VTB chief Andrei Kostin said on Friday that he saw the move as “more of a judicial issue than a political one”.
There was no further confirmation of any other asset freezes in France from officials in Moscow or Paris.
Yukos was once Russia’s biggest oil company, but was broken up after the arrest of its owner, Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in 2003. That came shortly after President Vladimir Putin warned Russia’s growing class of oligarchs against meddling in politics.
Khodorkovsky was granted residency in Switzerland after being released in 2013 following a decade in prison after a presidential pardon from Putin.
Last year, the permanent court of arbitration in The Hague ruled that Moscow had forced Yukos into bankruptcy with excessive tax claims before selling its assets to state-owned firms.
It ordered Russia to pay Yukos shareholders a record $50bn in compensation. Russia was told to pay compensation to shareholders in subsidiaries of Gibraltar-based Group Menatep, through which Khodorkovsky ran Yukos.
The group exists today as holding company GML, although Khodorkovsky is no longer involved and is not a party to the compensation claim.
GML’s Osborne said that proceedings were “already under way in Britain and the United States and further countries will follow”.
He said legislation in Belgium and France made it easier to freeze assets pending the outcome of the Yukos compensation dispute.
Original Article
Source: theguardian.com/
Author: Agence France-Presse in Moscow
No comments:
Post a Comment