Bashkiria Arbitration Court rejected Sistema JSFC petition on financial and economic expertise

UFA, 20 July 2017. /Bashinform News Agency, Olga Murtazina/. The Arbitration Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan held a regular hearing to review a claim of Rosneft to Sistema JSFC. The first one requires recovery of 170.6 billion rubles of damage that arose due to the reorganization of Bashneft. At the hearing, the parties' dispute on the caused damage continued.

Representatives of the defendant filed a petition for a third-party financial examination. The lawyers of the plaintiff were against it, considering it as delaying tactics, as well as requests for the involvement of three minority shareholders as complainants. The court rejected the petitions of Sistema's lawyers.

Representatives of Rosneft explained their position: "Sistema" states that from 2010 to 2014, it managed to increase Bashneft's capitalization several times. But these are real figures: in 2010, together with all non-core assets, the book value of Bashneft was 8.4 billion dollars, in 2014 - 4.6 billion dollars. During this time, the cost of mining increased almost twofold - from 19 to 36 billion rubles; commercial, general and administrative expenses - by more than 40 percent, from 11 to 16 billion rubles. In the period from 2010 to 2014, the average annual operating costs of Bashneft were about $ 7 per barrel, which is at least 20 percent worse than the industry index. As for the net profit, it was reduced by 36 percent per barrel of oil equivalent for the time that Bashneft was managed by Sistema.

As recalled by RIA Novosti, in the course of the reorganization in 2014, the Bashneft-Invest company was founded, into which authorized capital Bashneft contributed 49.41% of Sistema-Invest's shares with market value of more than 57.2 billion rubles. Sistema's daughter, in turn, transferred 16.8% of Bashneft's stock worth about 80.7 billion rubles to the new company, subject to the repayment of these shares.

In addition, Sistema-Invest transferred its liability to Bashneft-Invest in the form of a debt on loans issued earlier to Bashneft, in the amount of more than 36.9 billion rubles. After Bashneft-Invest merging with Bashneft, the obligations under the loans ceased due to the coincidence of the debtor and the lender in one person.

Then, during the reorganization preferred shares worth about 12.5 billion rubles were redeemed from Bashneft's minority shareholders and subsequently repaid. All these acts, according to the plaintiffs, caused losses to the Bashkir oil company.