RUSSIA is one of the West’s biggest headaches. Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has menaced its neighbours to the point where NATO is strengthening defences in the Baltic states. The European Union has just renewed economic sanctions imposed after the attack on Ukraine. But governments are doing less to bring home to the regime in Moscow the consequences of its actions than Western law courts, where Russia faces a barrage of litigation from investors whose assets it has expropriated.
The Kremlin’s contempt for the rule of law in Russia was exemplified by the looting of Yukos, once the country’s biggest and best-run oil company. Its independent-minded boss, the tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was a political irritant as well as a very rich man. So in a series of spurious lawsuits Yukos was broken apart. After a questionable auction in 2004, its best assets ended up with Rosneft, a state-controlled oil company run by a close ally of Mr Putin’s.
At the time that seemed a clear victory for the Kremlin. But more than ten years later, the shareholders of Yukos, who were left many billions of dollars out of pocket, are making striking headway in their...
from The Economist: Leaders http://ift.tt/1KcDmfe
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