NEW YORK, October 5 (RIA Novosti) -A U.S.-based subsidiary of Yukos, declared bankrupt in 2006, intends to sue the Russian government for a record $100 billion in the Strasbourg Court, the Yukos former finance director said on Monday.
Bruce Misamore, who now heads Yukos International, said over the phone from Houston that the lawsuit was the biggest in the entire 60-year history of the European Court for Human Rights.
Misamore said that Yukos International now protects the interests of 55,000 shareholders who suffered from the bankruptcy of what was Russia's largest oil company and one of the biggest oil corporations in the world.
Yukos formally ceased to exist in November 2007, after its assets had been sold off through a series of liquidation auctions to meet vast creditor claims. State oil company Rosneft bought up the lion's share of the production assets, becoming Russia's largest oil producer.
Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud and tax evasion. He has consistently denied all charges against him, saying he was punished for supporting the tiny pro-Western opposition, and that the liquidation of Yukos was engineered by corrupt government officials aiming to seize lucrative oil assets.
Misamore earlier said that the criminal prosecution of Khodorkovsky and the company's top managers, as well as the giant's bankruptcy and return to state control were unfounded from a legal point of view.
The European Court for Human Rights has scheduled the hearings of the case for November 19, Yukos former lawyer Pavel Ivlev said.
Meanwhile, Russian Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov earlier said that Russia viewed this lawsuit as a routine case and intended to draw the court's attention to procedural violations committed when the complaint was filed.
