The Russian state-controlled oil company Rosneft has paid Yukos Capital 12.9 billion rubles ($400 mln) in overdue debt, a company spokesman said on Monday.
On June 25, the Dutch Supreme Court denied Rosneft the right to appeal a court order for it to pay Yukos Capital, a leftover subsidiary of the now defunct Russian oil giant Yukos, the equivalent of $400 million. The court upheld an April 2009 Dutch ruling that Rosneft owed Yukos Capital 13 billion rubles ($418 million) in loans dating to 2004.
The International Court of Commercial Arbitration awarded the money to Yukos Capital in September 2006, but Russian courts overturned the ruling.
The appeals court dismissed the decision as unfair on the grounds that the Russian judicial system is not independent or impartial toward Rosneft.
Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, has now been accused of stealing $9.6 billion from the $15.8 billion profit generated by Yukos between 1999 and 2003, as well as 350 million tons of oil.
Russian former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov told a court hearing in late May the new charges against Khodorkovsky were ludicrous and politically motivated because the former head of Yukos had funded the opposition.
He said in 2003 it had become obvious there were "tensions" between then-President Vladimir Putin and Khodorkovsky.
MOSCOW, August 9 (RIA Novosti)
