RusEnergy

3/16/2006 Kommersant.ru - Rosneft President Sergey Bogdanchikov is ready to face charges brought in by the YUKOS minors. His lawyers have applied for extending the term of response to claimants. Similar to ministers Viktor Khristenko and Alexey Kudrin, who had been also served with the writs of summons under this suit, Bogdanchikov had been denying the mere fact of being given the writ up to the last moment but filed the appeal to the U.S. Columbia Court just in time. For Sergey Bogdanchikov, the term of responding to claims of the YUKOS minors expired on March 6. On the same day, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP that acts on behalf of Rosneft president on the one hand, and lawyers of the claimants on the other hand, filed an appeal seeking prolongation of the term in the court. Past October 24, twelve minors of YUKOS went to the District Court of Columbia against the Russian Federation blaming on defendants the deliberate attack on YUKOS, which led to the actual "re-nationalization of YUKOS" by disposal of its production arm, Yuganskneftegaz. The case is bound to be long remembered not only because of the essence of claims. Just the mere method of serving the writs of summons is interesting. The officers of justice tend to present writs and respective notifications to top-ranked officials of Russia in time of their trips to the foreign countries. Russia's Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko, for instance, received the documents in the United States past October 25, in time of the party staged in honor of Russia's delegation. Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin was caught off-guard January 12, when he arrived in Washington to deal with G8 business. Sergey Bogdanchikov was served with the writ February 14, before making a report during the World Oil Week held in London. Another tradition is that the persons notified under the case start by denying the receipt of the writs of summons. Nevertheless, they prefer to condescend to negotiating with the claimants' lawyers some time later. On February 1, for instance, the lawyers of Khristenko, Kudrin, Gazprom, Rosneft and Rosneftegaz filed a joint appeal for establishing the sole and final date of response to all claims of the YUKOS minors. Pursuant to the appeal, which was upheld February 8, such term is 60 days starting from the date when Russia's Foreign Ministry receives notification concerning the suit against the Russian Federation. Sent via the U.S. State Department, the court documents were not submitted as of the end of past week, according to Thomas Johnson, a partner to Covington & Burling, which stands for the claimants.