Armed raid on BP office over lawsuit

Russian bailiffs accompanied by armed policemen searched BP’s Moscow office yesterday because of a minority shareholder’s lawsuit, the company said.

BP’s Russian spokesman Vladimir Buyanov said it was co-operating and that its office in a Moscow skyscraper was being guarded by police with assault rifles.

The search is connected with a lawsuit in a Siberian court. Andrei Prokhorov, a 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.

Mr Prokhorov is seeking some $3 billion (£1.8bn) in damages. He said his interests were harmed as TNK-BP could have benefited from the deal.

Mr Buyanov said employees were allowed to come in with armed police and collect personal belonging, but they still did not know when they would be allowed into work.

BP spokesman David Nicholas said it did not think “there [was] any legitimate basis for the raid”.

He said the work of the BP 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 teamed up with Exxon Mobil on Tuesday in a landmark deal to develop offshore oil fields in the Russian Arctic. Rosneft’s spokesman said there was no way that BP could revive the Arctic deal with Rosneft now.