TYUMEN, July 27 - RAPSI. The Tyumen Regional Commercial Court has partially met on Friday TNK-BP minority shareholder Andrei Prohorov's claim for over $3 billion in damages, the court told RIA Novosti.

The claim against BP Russian Investment Limited and BP p.l.c. initially amounted to 288 billion rubles ($8.8 billion).

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

The West-Siberian District Federal Commercial Court dismissed all the judgments in the case and remanded the lawsuit in June.

At the same time, the court upheld Prokhorov's appeal contesting the Tyumen Regional Commercial Court's November 18, 2011 decision and the Eighth Commercial Court of Appeals' March 12, 2012 ruling refusing to uphold his claims.

According to BP's attorney Konstantin Lukoyanov, the lawsuits against the BP companies are absurd and a misuse of rights. He said the first instance and the appeals courts have confirmed that the lawsuits are frivolous.

According to Lukoyanov, the BP companies believe that the further appeal of the judgments and the lawsuit itself have nothing to do with TNK-BP shareholders or their company's interests.

He also stressed that the matter is unlikely to be successful in an appeals court, as the lawsuit is groundless, and further proceedings will only lead to greater legal expenses, which may be subject to recovery.

On August 9, 2011, the Tyumen Regional Commercial Court accepted the lawsuits filed by TNK-BP minority shareholders to recover losses from top BP officials Peter Charow and Richard Sloan, and the holding's parent companies BP p.l.c. and BP Russian Investments Limited.

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 ($2.66 billion), while 409.284 billion rubles ($12.52 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 was lost profit.

BP Russian Investments Limited and BP p.l.c. hold that the claims are groundless as there is no evidence of any losses.