No Mistrals For Putin

MOSCOW, November 4. According to the Russian news agency TASS, under the contract, France can delay handover of a Mistral-type helicopter carrier to Russia for three more months, a source in the Russian military-technical cooperation system with foreign countries told TASS. This would allow to reach the date of the 15th of January 2015. This exact date is the deadline to pay the 50 billion dollars fine to the ex-Yukos shareholders after the Hague trial that saw Russia being condemned for illegally dismentling this company. As a reminder, Russia can't appeal the sentence so it won't be able to push the deadline. Tim Osborne, the lawyer representing the interests of exiled Russian billionaires and former Yukos shareholders said the case for expropriating Russian assets would soon be brought before German courts. Osborne added that the group was also moving to bring similar cases to courts in the U.S., Britain, the Netherlands and France. The shareholders of Yukos could ...

  In July, Russia has been condemned to a 50 billion dollars fine by the court in The Hague in the Yukos case. The deadline to pay this fine is the 15th of January 2015. Could the Mistrals be seized to pay the fine if Russia fails to pay in time? Civil or war ships? “We will deliver civilian hulls,” French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said at an aeronautics and defense conference organized by business daily Les Echos. “It’s a reality. The client can then arm the two ships. We will deliver, under the signed contract, a package which is not armed.” So, did France find a trick to sell the Mistrals not as military war ships but civilian hulls that can be armed? Why is that important? For military war ships, a judgment issued in december 2012 allowed Argentina to get back its war ship "Libertad" that had been blocked in Ghana for ten weeks in a trial to get the ship to pay a government debt. It is possible that the Mistrals could get the same treatment if they ha...