A Dutch court has frozen $9 million of assets belonging to Rosneft following an appeal by a group of US investors who are suing the Russian oil company, a lawyer for the investors said on Thursday.
Tom Johnson, a lawyer with Covington & Burling LLP, said the Dutch court's decision would preclude Rosneft from selling some of its stake in Netherlands-registered West Kamchatka Holding BV.
The decision comes as Rosneft and its bankers meet to decide on how to price shares in the state-owned oil company's initial public offering, which would raise up to $11.6 billion. The lawsuit against Rosneft, Russia and others is for losses related to the investors' shares in YUKOS. Johnson said the court's decision might pave the way for other YUKOS investors - who lost $6 billion - to take similar action.
"The precedent has been set. Others can follow," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. YUKOS shares lost most of their value following a series of massive back tax claims, which led to the acquisition by Rosneft of its main oil-producing unit as part of what analysts saw as a Kremlin campaign against YUKOS's politically ambitious founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. YUKOS lost its main production asset, Yugansk, in a forced auction to pay the back tax claims, and Rosneft soon after acquired Yugansk.