Dividends paid are subject to return if it is proven that a shareholder owned shares illegally which fact has already been established by the award issued by the Moscow City Commercial Arbitration Court in 2014 (based on the award pronounced by this court in the claim filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, shares in Bashneft were seized in favor of the state) and by the award of the Commercial Arbitration Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan in August 2017, says Denis Frolov, Partner, BMS Law Firm.

The existing court practice is not in favor of Systema: in such cases dividends paid are collected as unjustified enrichment, says the laywer. Still, JSFC Systema may attempt to prove that it did not have any malicious intent when owning shares, and it is the state to blame in privatizing the Bashkortostan’s Fuel and Energy Complex in violation of statutory requirements, the lawyer specifies.