MOSCOW, May 22 (RAPSI) - US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted Yukos Capital S.a.r.l. attorneys’ fees in the amount of $78,673 in a dispute against Rosneft subsidiary Samaraneftegaz which has filed an appeal.

Yukos Capital asked for its attorneys’ fees charged for the period from January 6, 2014 through March 21, 2014. The request was accompanied with the counsel's affidavit detailing its time records and billing rates. It said that the billing rates of attorneys at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP who worked on the matter were comparable to those of partners and associates at prominent national law firms “with similar skills and experience”. Notably, Robert L. Weigel, partner with Gibson Dunn, charged $1,120 per hour while the associates’ work was estimated at $775 – $625 per hour.

The dispute revolves around two July 2004 loan agreements, which provided for the arbitration of disputes in Russia and under Russian law, as well as November 2005 addenda to the agreements that provided for arbitration in New York’s International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) under New York law, according to the court records.

In August 2013, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a request by Yukos Capital for summary judgment in its efforts to seek enforcement of an arbitration award it had earlier won in the ICC against Samaraneftegaz.

In early October, a supplemental judgment linked to the August judgment ordered Rosneft to pay $185,907,785.41 plus interest to Yukos Capital.
Then in late October, Yukos Capital filed a memo requesting that a US federal court order Samaraneftegaz to satisfy the judgment.

On January 9, 2014, the district court ordered Samaraneftegaz to turnover assets in order to satisfy the judgment, and to refrain from paying dividends, making loans, or providing other such payments to shareholders or corporate affiliates until either the judgment is satisfied or a bond is posted pending its appeal.

Later in February Yukos Capital filed an application with the appellate court seeking to compel Samaraneftegaz to comply with its post-judgment discovery requests. The court denied the application to hold Samaraneftegaz in contempt for failure to comply with the judgment or turnover order because it was premature in light of Samaraneftegaz's pending appeal.