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Court blocks Yukos papers handover



By Upstream staff 

Switzerland's highest court has blocked a bid by Swiss judicial authorities to give Russia bank documents linked to former owners of the bankrupt oil company Yukos, Swiss media reported.

The Lausanne-based Federal Tribunal, whose ruling is final, accepted the appeals lodged by six plaintiffs, including main owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, to stop the Swiss attorney general from sharing information with Moscow, Reuters reported the ATS news agency as saying.

The Swiss attorney general's office in Berne confirmed it had lost a Yukos case involving six appellants, but declined to name the plaintiffs, citing confidentiality rules.

Russia last week sold the last big asset of Yukos, once the country's largest oil producer. It was founded by Khodorkovsky, who is now serving an eight-year prison term along with Lebedev in Siberia on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

ATS reported that the Tribunal Federal declared that the Kremlin had opened the criminal case in Moscow to "sideline declared or potential political adversaries". The judges also cited a "serious and objective risk of prohibited discriminatory treatment" if legal assistance were provided to Russia.

The Swiss attorney general had no comment on the content of the ruling, which reversed its December decision to share the documents with Russia.

In 2004, Switzerland blocked some 6 billion Swiss francs ($5 billion) in assets related to the Yukos case, at Russia's request, according to Maria Schnebli, a federal prosecutor in the attorney-general's office. These were mainly shares, not liquid assets, she said, declining to give details.

But the Tribunal Federal ordered the freeze lifted to a large extent later the same year, leaving assets worth some 200-300 million francs still frozen in Switzerland, she said.

"The decision now rendered only concerned transmission of documents," Schnebli told Reuters from the capital Berne. "We have to examine the question of lifting the freeze on assets still frozen."

She could not say when a decision to release assets might come, but added: "We are working on it."

Russia had also requested bank information on "various other account holders" linked to Yukos not covered by the ruling, whose assets are included in the 200-300 million francs of frozen funds, she said. The Swiss attorney-general had not yet made its own decision on whether to share the information.

The top Swiss court ordered that the six plaintiffs including Khodorkovsky - once Russia's richest man - each be paid an indemnity of 4,000 francs, according to ATS.


Thursday, 23 August, 2007, 21:22 GMT  | last updated: Thursday, 23 August, 2007, 21:26 GMT

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