Russia sought Wednesday to block former Yukos Oil investors from enforcing an almost $60 billion arbitration award, telling a London appeals court that English courts must consider its claim to state immunity afresh.
Russia argued in the Court of Appeal that a lower English court was wrong to dismiss its claim to state immunity based on the ruling of a Dutch court, contending that English judges must not rely on foreign courts on the issue of immunity.
Vernon Flynn KC of Brick Court Chambers, representing Russia, said an English court “must determine for itself, essentially de novo, whether an applicable exception to the state’s adjudicable immunity arises.”
“An obligation to give effective immunity … may only be satisfied by an autonomous determination, applying the civil standard, of the factual and legal arguments said to give rise to immunity,” Flynn said. “The conclusion based on issue estoppel arising from a foreign judgment is not a determination at all and certainly not one to the civil standard.”
