UPDATE 2: Sistema asks court to dismiss Rosneft’s 171 bln rbl suit

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UFA/MOSCOW, Jul 20 (PRIME) -- Russian multi-industry holding Sistema has asked the Arbitration Court of the republic of Bashkortostan to dismiss a 170.6 billion ruble suit filed against the company by oil major Rosneft without a hearing on the merits, according to the information obtained by PRIME in the court on Thursday.

A Sistema lawyer said that the claimants have no right to protect interests of oil company Bashneft, as the warrant of authority allows Rosneft’s lawyer only to act on behalf of the oil major, not to file a suit on behalf of Bashneft.

Rosneft representatives also had no authority to file the suit, as, according to an expert’s statement, “a derivative suit may be filed by an individual on behalf of a shareholder of an affiliate legal entity only if there is a special order that allows them to act in the arbitration proceeding on behalf of a legal entity in favor of which the suit was filed,” the lawyer said.

All claimants violated regulations in filing their suits. Moreover, Bashneft violated its own charter by filing the suit, as its board of directors has to discuss any position of the company in corporate conflicts, which has not happened yet, the lawyer said.

Earlier on Thursday, Maxim Bobylev, a deputy chairman of the court, denied a motion of Sistema to disqualify Judge Irina Nurislamova who hears the suit.

A Sistema representative said previously that Nurislamova turned down all Sistema’s 13 motions and obliged the company to prove a “negative fact” that Bashneft suffered no losses from a reorganization. He also said Sistema thinks that the asset seizure of the company under the case was groundless. It is unprecedented when “assets worth 250 billion rubles are seized under a 170 billion ruble suit,” the representative said.

The representative also said that the judge is too fast in studying the case, as she is “physically unable to study and understand the amount of provided materials” because the case files include about 4,500 pages.

A Rosneft lawyer said that the court satisfied all motions of the claimant as they were in line with the Code of Arbitration Procedure and they could not be ignored, so there is no reason to disqualify Nurislamova.

Nurislamova also turned down Sistema’s motion for financial and economic appraisal of 49.4% in affiliate Sistema-Invest owned by Bashneft before the 2014 reorganization. A Sistema representative said that the company valued one share in Sistema-Invest in 2014 only for a purchase of a minority stake, and that the market value of the stake should be calculated taking into account other factors.

But a Rosneft representative said that Sistema still used the estimate in calculations of assets and liabilities during the reorganization, making the expertise irrelevant.

COMPLAINTS AGAINST JUDGE

On Wednesday, Nurislamova rejected a Sistema motion to have an expert assessment of the economic impact from reorganization of oil company Bashneft under the suit. Rosneft claims that the reorganization was a disguise for asset stripping. Sergei Kopytov, Sistema’s official representative, said the company filed complaints against Nurislamova’s actions to Chief Justice of the Russian Supreme Court Vyacheslav Levedev, to the presidential administration, to the Higher Judges' Qualifications Board, and to Irina Reshetnikova, chairwoman of the Arbitration Court of the Urals Federal District.

“The order of hearing conducted by the judge, her decisions, including denial of absolutely all requests by defendants and third parties except parties that act in favor of the claimants, cause serious doubt in her neutrality and forced us to file complaints against her illegal actions,” he said.

The hearings “look more and more like a medieval court…Any rejections of defendants are thrown away. It is not worthy of speaking of other violations if even a foreigner who comes to the court with an interpreter is denied the right to speak only because he personally cannot speak Russian?” he said.

“The judge also hurries without any reason when appointing a hearing to the morning of the next day, given the fact that claimants, defendants and third parties have filed about 200 documents to the court totaling about 6,000 pages. We don’t understand how the judge was able to even cast a glance at all of them, save for understand every document.”

Mikhail Leyontyev, press secretary of Rosneft, said Sistema is doing its best to force the authorities to allow an out-of-the-court decision. “The complaint to the presidential administration is an apparent attempt to create the maximum possible public outcry around the court proceedings and it is an open mocking of the Russian legal judicial system and crude interference into the court process,” he said.

The tactic of Sistema is to drag on the process in any way possible, and lawyers of the company are not trying to improve their legal position, “but inventing more and more methods and tricks to drag on the court proceeding,” he said.

Rosneft filed the suit in May, seeking to recover a loss stemming from alleged asset withdrawal from Bashneft in 2009–2014 by Sistema.

(59.2418 rubles – U.S. $1)

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