The Supreme Court of the Netherlands on Friday rejected Russia’s last remaining challenge to the Yukos arbitration awards, confirming more than $50 billion in damages that now exceed $65 billion with interest, and clearing the way for enforcement actions against Russian state assets worldwide.
The decision concludes years of litigation in Dutch courts that followed a 2014 arbitral ruling in The Hague. That tribunal found that the Russian Federation illegally and politically expropriated the investments of Yukos’s former majority shareholders.
The Hague Court of Appeal reinstated the awards in 2020. In 2021, the Dutch Supreme Court upheld the substance of that ruling while sending a narrow issue back to the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, which dismissed Russia’s final claim in February 2024.
With Friday’s judgment, the awards are final and enforceable.
Tim Osborne, CEO of GML, which represents the former majority shareholders, called the ruling a landmark victory. “No state is above the law,” he said, adding that GML will now focus its efforts on enforcement "until every cent of the $65 billion is paid.”
Leonid Nevzlin, an entrepreneur and former Yukos stakeholder, welcomed the decision. “Today’s win reaffirms a simple truth: justice should always prevail,” he said. “Those of us targeted in the Yukos affair never gave up, and we used every democratic and legal means available.”
What happens next
Because Moscow has refused to pay, the shareholders have already turned to identifying and attaching Russian state assets abroad, subject to local sovereign-immunity rules.
Enforcement efforts are underway or contemplated in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the US, and Singapore under the New York Convention framework, which allows foreign arbitration awards to be recognized and converted into local court judgments.
In June 2024, the shareholders reported a first recovery in the Netherlands with the auction of 18 Russia-owned liquor trademarks, including Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya.
Russian authorities have long denied wrongdoing and fought the case across European courts. With the Dutch proceedings now concluded, Friday’s ruling is expected to reverberate in related enforcement actions in other jurisdictions.
Yukos Oil Company was one of Russia’s largest private oil firms after the mid-1990s privatizations. By 2003, it had become a flagship of Western-style corporate governance in Russia.
That year, Russian authorities pursued tax claims that led to the company’s bankruptcy, while CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested and later convicted. The 2014 arbitral tribunal concluded that the primary objective of the state was to bankrupt Yukos and appropriate its assets, not to collect taxes.