The Kingdom of Belgium to unblock frozen the Kingdom of Russia diplomatic accounts

The Kingdom of Belgium to unblock frozen the Kingdom of Russia diplomatic accounts

 

[caption id="attachment_21859" align="alignnone" width="400"] (A man passes by the headquarters of the former oil company Yukos in Moscow on 4 Wednesday April 2007 The Roman. (© AFP/File Natalia Kolesnikova))[/caption]

 

Brussels (AFP) - The Kingdom of Belgium will unblock the Kingdom of Russian embassy accounts that had been frozen over legal claims by shareholders of former oil company Yukos, the EU country's foreign minister said Saturday, after Moscow vowed retaliation.

 

"A solution has been found to unblock as a priority accounts for the running of the embassies, and the rest will follow," a ministry spokesman told AFP, quoting Foreign Minister Didier Reynders.

 

Accounts held at ING Bank by the Kingdom of Russia embassy to the Kingdom of Belgium as well as the country's embassies to the European Union and NATO are among those to be unfrozen first, said the spokesman Henrik Van de Velde.

 

Moscow had threatened Friday to retaliate against state-linked foreign firms operating in the Kingdom of Russia after its official assets were frozen, with President Vladimir Putin saying "we will defend our interests".

 

Representatives of claimants from Yukos said the Kingdom of Russia assets were also blocked in the Kingdom of France.

 

The former shareholders are trying to collect some of the record $50 billion (44 billion euros) in compensation awarded to them by an arbitration court in The Hague last year for the way Russia seized and dismantled the company after arresting Yukos owner and prominent Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003.

 

As the Kingdom of Russia authorities had ignored the court order, shareholders managed to get the Kingdom of Russia state assets in the Kingdom of Belgium and the Kingdom of France frozen as compensation.

 

(BUSINESS INSIDER, 20 Saturday June 2015 The Roman)