The city Arbitration Court finished preliminary hearings today, and intends to start considering the case on its merits at the next session.
Plaintiff Habib Nurgamzayev regards the resolution he disputes as illegal-it clashes with Russia's federal law on bankruptcy/insolvency, and violates his own rights as holder, he insists.
Yukos appealed to the Houston-based federal bankruptcy court for Texas' south district, December last. The court initiated proceedings on the formal reason of an approximate six million dollars present on Yukos US bank accounts. Besides, Bruce Misamore, company financial director, was working in Houston, stressed Yukos.
Its and its branches' lump fiscal arrears in Russia exceeded $23 billion at the time.
The Houston court suspended Yukos property auctioning till the case was settled on its merits, and banned loans to prospective purchasers.
The matter took a different turn, March 3, as the court dismissed the Yukos bankruptcy application to be regarded from the US legal viewpoint.
The company chose not to bring an appeal against the verdict.
Yukos will not go on with bankruptcy proceedings in US courts, and will revoke its appeal, Michael Lake, company official spokesman in the USA, said in a statement.
That does not mean Yukos will give up litigation for its assets. The Houston verdicts will not prevent it from trying to rescue the cost of its property, and to protect its holders, creditors and employees. The company will work to regain the cost of expropriated assets, stresses the statement.
Judge Nancy Atlas of the Houston federal district court refused to meet a Yukos request to protect its assets while the appeal was under consideration. She said the company had failed to convince her the appeal was legally grounded. The judge approved a previous verdict by a lower-instance federal bankruptcy court, which said the Yukos affair was outside US jurisdiction.
