A syndicate of Western banks didn’t believe the foggy promises of Yukos president Steven Theede to settle debts. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on March 24, 2006.
On this day, on March 24, 2006, a syndicate of Western banks to which Yukos owed about $483 million, refuse to listen to promises of Yukos president Steven Theede to settle the debt.
According to the newspaper “The Financial Times”, on March 10, 2006, a consortium of foreign banks, including Societe Generale, BNP Paribas SA, Commerzbank, Credit Lyonnais, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC, ING, filed to the Moscow Arbitration Court a bankruptcy claim of the Oil Company Yukos, and after that Steven Michael Theede, the president of Yukos, started to keep calling them.
In particular, the newspaper “The Financial Times” reported that Theede had tried to get on the phone the main bank of the syndicate – Societe General. He intended to explain to Yukos creditors that in a few days Yukos was going to sell the Lithuanian oil refinery and settle the debt. Nobody answered his call.
(See also the article “On this day, a syndicate of banks revenged itself upon Khodorkovsky for cheat” and the article “On this day, Western creditors sent judicial “greetings” to Khodorkovsky”).
“QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ROLE OF FOREIGN BANKS”
According to “The Financial Times”, “when on the next day Steven Theede, finally, got through to the bank, he was told that the issue was no longer under its control – the debts had been sold to the company “Rosneft”, Russian state oil company, which earlier had acquired Yukos main production affiliate “Yuganskneftegaz”. “Involuntary a feeling was emerging that the banks didn’t want us to settle the debts”, said a person close to Theede”, reported the newspaper and lamented that “this and other moments have raises questions about the role of foreign banks in the most ambivalent saga in the history of Russian business”.
Some Russian media outlets, playing up to Yukos, also made an accent on the false thesis of “a source close to Theede” that “foreign creditors didn’t want Yukos debts to be settled”.
In fact, “The Financial Times” and other biased media failed to mention that the banks met halfway the company “Rosneft”, as Steven Theede, instead of money, proposed to them to wait. In particular, to wait until the sale of the Lithuanian assets after which Yukos would have money to settle the debts.
In a different situation, “the bank sharks”, perhaps, could have waited. But they had no other purpose but the return of the debt, and they had no intention to suffer losses because of the swindler Khodorkovsky.
“All the more so as, by that time, an inappropriate corporate reporting was exposed, as well as financial machinations, and a series of contract murders and attempted murders at the behest of Yukos leaders. All this Mikhail Khodorkovsky, asking from the syndicate in 2003 a credit line to the amount of 1 billion dollars, concealed. The calculus of the swindlers from the “main shareholders” was that, with such solid financial partnership, - and these are banks with world names – their crimes would be unpunished, but it turned out to be a sheer illusion. The banks gave, the banks took, the banks got out of the game. And there were no feelings towards the swindlers from the most “transparent” oil company”, notes the website Prigovor.ru.
(See also the previous article “On this day, Yukos acknowledged its judicial failure in the United States”. “Yukos representatives acknowledged the futility of efforts to use for its claims the American bankruptcy laws”. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on March 23, 2005).
