Russia jailed Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky and auctioned his oil company for back taxes, and the Dutch Supreme Court made a $50 billion award to its shareholders final

Mikhail Khodorkovsky bought Yukos at a 1995 state auction for $350 million. It became Russia's second-biggest oil company, and his fortune was estimated at more than $15 billion. In October 2003 he was arrested at gunpoint on his private jet at a Siberian airport. Russia said Yukos owed $27 billion in back taxes. In December 2004 its main production unit, Yuganskneftegas, was auctioned for $9 billion. The winner was Baikal Finance Group, a small company that outbid the state gas monopoly Gazprom. A US bankruptcy court in Houston had issued a restraining order, and the sale went ahead anyway. The unit ended up with a state-owned company, and Yukos filed for bankruptcy in 2006. Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2005 for eight years and convicted again at a second trial. Putin pardoned him in December 2013, and he flew to Berlin, where his mother was in treatment. In 2014 an arbitration panel ruled that Russia had seized control of Yukos with tax claims and ordered it to pay $50 billion to the former majority shareholders. Russia fought the award in Dutch courts for 11 years. On 17 October 2025 the Dutch Supreme Court rejected Russia's final appeal and called its ruling a definitive end. GML, the shareholders' holding company, says the debt exceeds $65 billion with interest and that it will pursue Russian state assets worldwide.