"BP says armed search of Moscow office is illegal" September 01, 2011|By Nataliya Vasilyeva, Associated Press
MOSCOW - Russian bailiffs accompanied by armed policemen searched BP’s Moscow office yesterday because of a minority shareholder’s lawsuit, the company said, calling the action illegal.
BP’s Russian spokesman Vladimir Buyanov said the company was cooperating with the bailiffs. BP’s office in a Moscow skyscraper was guarded by police with assault rifles, he said.
“Did they expect to meet any resistance here?’’ Buyanov said by telephone.
The search is connected with a lawsuit in a Siberian court. Andrei Prokhorov, an obscure minority shareholder of BP’s Russian venture TNK-BP, is suing the British oil giant for allowing an Arctic exploration deal with the Russian state-owned energy firm Rosneft to fall through.
In London, BP spokesman David Nicholas said the company does not think “there is any legitimate basis for the raid today.’’
He said the work of the BP PLC office was “illegally being interfered with.’’
The multibillion-dollar Arctic deal between BP and Rosneft collapsed earlier this year after Russian TNK-BP shareholders contested the deal.
They said BP was breaking TNK-BP’s shareholder agreement by entering into a deal without the venture’s knowledge or consent.
Rosneft on Tuesday teamed up with Exxon Mobil in a landmark deal to develop offshore oil fields in the Russian Arctic.
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