Years after its assets were seized by Moscow and its chief executive jailed, oil giant Yukos went to the European rights court Thursday to seek 98 billion dollars in damages from Russia.

The sum, equivalent to about 72 billion euros, is the largest claim ever sought in a case before the European Court of Human Rights, whose rulings are binding on member countries like Russia.
 

Former Yukos managers contend that the Russian state acted illegally when it dismantled what was then Russia's biggest company through a series of measures starting in 2000 and culminating with the company's liquidation in 2007.
 

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the company's founder and formerly Russia's richest man, is serving an eight-year sentence for a fraud and tax evasion conviction in 2005 but his legal troubles appear far from over.
 

"This was an expropriation by any other name," Yukos lawyer Piers Gardner told the court in Strasbourg at the opening of the one day hearing.

It was the first time in the decade-long saga that Yukos and Russian lawyers met face-to-face in an international court.
 

The court is to decide whether Russia violated Yukos managers' rights to property, rights to a fair trial and rights to be shielded from arbitrary legal proceedings, all of which are enshrined in the European convention.
 

Following the one day hearing, judges are expected to take several months to hand down a ruling.

Complaints admissible
Most of Yukos' complaints filed in Strasbourg since 2004 have been declared admissible by the rights courts, which it does in less than five percent of the applications it receives.
 

The Yukos case and Khodorkovsky's plight have been held up by some Kremlin critics as examples of Moscow's ruthlessness in dealing with businesses that refuse to toe its line.
 

Khodorkovsky's supporters have long argued that the charges were trumped up to jail the tycoon in revenge for daring to finance the opposition when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was president.
 

But Russia insists the businessman and his partners are guilty of massive financial crimes stemming from the controversial privatisation deals of the 1990s.
 

During the hearing on Thursday, Gardner argued that Yukos had settled all of its tax bills and that the government's action against the firm was aimed at stripping it of its assets and selling them off.
 

Lawyers for the Russian state retorted that Yukos' claim was groundless and urged the rights court to reject it while maintaining Moscow's view that the firm was engaged in massive tax fraud in the early 2000s.
 

Founded in 1993, Yukos declared bankruptcy in 2006 and its assets sold at auction in 2007.

Justice fraud
On the eve of the Strasbourg case, Khodorkovsky claimed in an opinion piece published in a Russian newspaper that the justice system was being used to steal property from businessmen.
 

"Until you've found yourself in the paws of the system, you know nothing about it. The system is essentially a united enterprise whose business is legalised violence," Khodorkovsky wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily.
 

In a related case, the Strasbourg court ruled in 2007 that Russia had violated the rights of Platon Lebedev, Khodorkovsky's associate at Yukos, and awarded him 3,000 euros in damage. Russia is appealing that decision.
 

The 46 year old former tycoon has been on trial in Moscow since April on fresh charges of embezzling millions of tons of oil and money laundering that could see him jailed for another two decades.
 

Both Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have served jail time in the bleak Siberian province of Chita.
 

Source: AFP