MOSCOW, May 5 - RAPSI. The Tyumen Regional Commercial Court terminated proceedings in BP Exploration Operating Company's $317,600 lawsuit against TNK-BP minority shareholder Andrei Prokhorov to compensate losses resulted from interim measures.
The case was closed after the plaintiff withdrew its lawsuit.
On July 19, 2011 the court imposed interim measures in a lawsuit filed by TNK-BP Holding minority shareholders led by Prokhorov against company board members Peter Charow and Richard Sloan as well as against TNK-BP's parent companies BP p.l.c. and BP Russian Investments Limited.
The court ordered the defendants at Prokhorov’s request to submit a number of guidelines regulating duties and standards of behavior for TNK-BP board members.
On August 31 and September 1, 2011, bailiffs searched BP's offices in Moscow and confiscated documents pursuant to the Tyumen court's ruling in the TNK-BP Holding minority shareholders lawsuit.
However, in October 2011 the court ruled for BP's appeal and cancelled court’s decision on interim measures.
Prokhorov tried to collect $17.25 billion from BP and BP-nominated board members in August 2011.
BP, one of six oil and gas "supermajors," and Rosneft, a leading Russian oil company, 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. Negotiations came to a close in June.
Prokhorov believes that if TNK-BP were a member of a 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. Therefore, he maintained that the difference between the current fair price of the shares and the price at which TNK-BP would have acquired the stake in the swap was lost profit.
In the opinion of BP Russian Investments Limited and BP plc, the claims were groundless as no loss could be shown.
