MOSCOW, August 29 - RAPSI. The Western-Siberian District Federal Commercial Court has registered an appeal by TNK-BP Holding minority shareholder Andrei Prokhorov against the court ruling obligating him and other minority shareholders who joined him in the case to pay the legal fees involved in the lawsuit against BP board members Peter Anthony Charow and Richard Scott Sloan, the court spokesperson told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI/rapsinews.com) Thursday.

In April, the Tyumen Region Commercial Court partially granted BP's appeal to have its legal fees reimbursed, recovering 2.7 million rubles ($83,837) from minority shareholders. Initially the statement of claims sought 22 million rubles ($683,120).

Commenting on the appellate court ruling , BP counsel Konstantin Lukoyanov said that it forms a real precedent for bringing corporate blackmailers to responsibility who hide behind minority shareholders and file groundless lawsuits which are neither in the interests of the company, nor of the shareholders.

"We hope that this legal practice will enable the protection of the rights of honest foreign investors subject to corporate attacks in the future," Lukoyanov said.

The lawsuit stemmed from a decision made by BP p.l.c. and its subsidiary BP Russian Investments Limited to turn down a proposal by TNK-BP to forge a strategic partnership with Rosneft and to purchase its shares. This missed opportunity inflicted losses on TNK-BP, the minority shareholder claimed.

TNK-BP minority shareholders maintain that Charow and Sloan must have known about the talks between BP p.l.c., or any other BP company and Rosneft.

The claims against the board members amounted to 87.112 billion rubles ($2.75 billion), while 409.284 billion rubles ($12.94 billion) in claims were made against the parent companies.

BP and Rosneft agreed to a share swap and the joint development of Russia's Arctic shelf in January 2011. However, the AAR Consortium, which represents the Russian TNK-BP shareholders, blocked the agreement. Talks came to a close in June 2011.

Prokhorov believes that if TNK-BP had become a member of the strategic partnership between the two companies, then under the swap agreement it would have purchased about 1.01 billion common shares in Rosneft, which in turn would have increased in value and brought higher profits to TNK-BP. He maintains that the difference between the present fair price of the shares and the price at which TNK-BP would have acquired the stake in the swap amounts to lost profit.

BP Russian Investments Limited and BP PLC maintain that the claims were groundless as there was no evidence of any losses sustained.