Skydda företag från politiska övergrepp

Bör företag kunna skydda sig från politiska övergrepp som inte baseras på något fel som företaget gjort ? Av obegripliga skäl har den svenska vänstern gått in för en linje som definitivt kan bli jobbförstörande i Sverige.

Mest aktuellt är den tyska regeringens beslut att lägga ner kärnkraften. Det är självklart att Vattenfall – ägt av svenska skattebetalare – inte ska betala den del av kalaset som berör Vattenfalls tyska kärnkraft.

Ett annat exempel berättar The Economist om i sitt senaste nummer:

Jaws dropped in July when a group of Yukos shareholders won a $50 billion arbitration award—20 times the previous record—against Russia for expropriating the oil company in 2004. The Kremlin had until November 11th to appeal against the ruling, by a tribunal in The Hague, and did indeed do so. It continues to maintain that it was not bound by the energy treaty under which the claim was brought, because it had signed but not ratified it. Though Russia’s chances of getting the ruling reversed seem slim, the appeal process could grind on for 10 years.

Even so, GML, a holding company representing Russian shareholders of Yukos (except its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who gave up his interest in the firm), can start chasing Russia’s assets in other countries by applying to their courts. It plans to start later this month in Britain, America, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

The first targets will be “low-hanging fruit”, such as state-owned art and buildings that are not used for strictly diplomatic purposes, says Tim Osborne, GML’s executive director. Embassies, warships and other non-commercial sovereign assets are off-limits—though what is commercial and what is diplomatic can be a legal grey area.

The juicier fruit will be harder to reach: payments to or from Russia that are routed through Western financial centres, and the foreign assets of firms that are owned or controlled by the state, such as Rosneft, the oil giant that subsumed Yukos, and Gazprom, another energy giant. The asset-hunters will have to convince the courts that these entities are alter egos of the government. It may help that both companies are among the targets of Western sanctions against Russia, and that the arbitration panel viewed Rosneft as an agent of the state in the expropriation.