MOSCOW, August 7 - RAPSI, Sergei Feklyunin. On Tuesday, the Eighth Commercial Court of Appeals upheld a decision by the lower court which obligated Andrei Prokhorov and other TNK-BP Holding minority shareholders who joined him to reimburse the legal fees for the lawsuit against BP board members Peter Anthony Charow and Richard Scott Sloan, a court representative told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI/rapsinews.com).

In this way the decision of the Tyumen Region Commercial Court, which in April partially granted the application of BP attorneys to reimburse legal fees, came into effect. Initially the statement of claims contained a requirement to collect 22 million rubles ($695,990).

Commenting on the ruling of the appellate court, BP attorney Konstantin Lukoyanov said that it forms a real practice for bringing to responsibility corporate blackmailers hiding behind minority shareholders and submitting groundless lawsuits for purposes connected neither with the company's interests nor those of 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 stems 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. The 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 p.l.c. maintain that the claims are groundless as there is no evidence of any losses having been sustained.