RBC: Luxembourg froze the shares of the first “unicorn” of the corporation “Rosnano”

The Luxembourg court has seized the shares of OCSiAl, the first “unicorn” (a startup company with a capitalization of over $1 billion in a short period) of the corporation “Rosnano“. About it informed RBC with reference to sources.

The lawsuit was filed by the former owners of the Yukos oil company, which was liquidated in 2007. According to sources, such measures were imposed by the court as early as the end of 2022, while litigation continues. “Rosnano” applied to law enforcement agencies even before the court decision, in order to prevent the possible withdrawal of OCSiAl capacities from the Russian Federation in order to transfer them to other jurisdictions. But one of the interlocutors noted that “in the end there were no such initiatives.”

OCSiAl was founded in 2010 in Novosibirsk. Now it is the world’s largest producer of graphene nanotubes – according to OCSiAl itself, it produces 80 tons of nanotubes per year, which is 97% of the world’s total capacity.

In 2014 “Rosnano” invested $40 million in the project, and in March 2019 the startup became a “unicorn” – then the company was valued at $1 billion. In 2021, after attracting $100 million in investments, the company was already valued at $2 billion.

Litigation in the Yukos case has been ongoing since 2005, when the subsidiaries of the Menatep group, Yukos Universal and Hulley Enterprises, which owned 51% of Yukos shares, filed a lawsuit against Russia with the International Arbitration Court of The Hague to recover damages from the expropriation of Yukos assets in the amount of $ 28, 3 billion. The total amount of claims against Russia, taking into account the claim of another owner, Veteran Petroleum, amounted to $33.1 billion.

In 2014, the arbitration recognized Russia’s actions as a violation of the Energy Charter and ordered to pay $50 billion to ex-Yukos shareholders, after which attempts were made in a number of countries to seize Russia’s accounts and assets in order to recover the debt.

In 2020, the court ordered Russia to pay more than $50 billion to former Yukos shareholders, and interest will be added to the amount awarded by the court. Then the beneficiary of Group Menatep Limited (GML, owned a controlling stake in Yukos) Leonid Nevzlin said that the plaintiffs would “use all available jurisdictions to recognize this decision in order to seize and recover funds and property” of Russia abroad.

In July 2021, the court obliged Russia to pay compensation in the amount of $5 billion to the former Yukos structure, Yukos Capital Sarl. At the time, the court ruling stated that “Russia illegally expropriated loans that Yukos Capital issued to its former parent company and did not allow justice to be done in this case in Russian courts.”