Hey Putin, arbitrate this!

An international arbitration tribunal in the Netherlands has awarded the shareholders of the now-defunct Yukos oil company more than US$50 billion (yep BILLION!), ruling that the Russian government wrongly seized the company from investors.

The panel, in a roughly 600-page ruling, held that the seizure of Yukos was a politically driven campaign to neutralise Yukos' former chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and distribute the oil giant's valuable assets to state-owned energy companies. The award has proven a devastating blow to the Kremlin. Predictably the Kremlin has already dismissed the decision and vowed to avenge appeal it.

So how do you enforce a $50 BILLION award? Especially against a state not known for playing by the rules.