A Jersey-based oil-refining company is suing the EU, Germany and Denmark for at least €95m over a windfall tax introduced during the Ukraine war that it sees as a “pretext” for undermining fossil fuel firms, leaked documents show.
Klesch Group Holdings Limited is taking action under a controversial secret court system enabled by the energy charter treaty (ECT), an agreement officials fear will stymie climate action and divert hundreds of billions of euros into the coffers of fossil fuel investors.
The fact that this is even possible is disgusting. These oil companies have been raping the world for decades.
Read about the Energy Charta Treaty.
Its fucked up
Makes you wonder how why would an oil refinery need a holding company in jersey…
Deff not for tax evasion purposes…
If that oil company has any slogan or statement about transitioning to green energy or that oil is actually clean then the countries/government can countersue for false advertisement
Not a lawyer btw
So when corporations can tell governments what taxes they can and can’t levy… what happens after that?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Jersey-based oil-refining company is suing the EU, Germany and Denmark for at least €95m over a windfall tax introduced during the Ukraine war that it sees as a “pretext” for undermining fossil fuel firms, leaked documents show.
In July, Brussels proposed a “coordinated withdrawal” from the pact following domino-style exit announcements by several EU countries including France, Spain and the Netherlands.
Klesch declined to comment on the issue but is seeking a declaration that the windfall tax violated the ECT, according to the leaked EU trade policy committee experts document, which is classified as “sensitive” and marked for “distribution on a need to know basis”.
It says Klesch claimed that the EU had “used the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the high electricity prices during 2022 as a pretext to constrain the competitiveness of fossil fuel companies”.
Cleodie Rickard, the trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said: “Countries like the UK that are teetering on the edge of a decision, while the EU contemplates a bloc-wide exit, must wake up to the risk and seize the window of opportunity to leave the ECT in coordination and before ever more egregious claims emerge.”
A company spokesperson, Pietro Jolli, said: “AET does not criticise nor question the coal ban, only requests to be financially compensated according to the ECT rules.
The original article contains 607 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The article is not very clear about what the energy charter treaty is - as far as I can tell, it is (among other things) designed to encourage international investment in the energy sector by providing foreign investors certain protections. In other words, countries that sign the treaty are guaranteeing that they won’t just take the money foreign investors put into their energy companies. The largest case involving the treaty has to do with Russian oil company Yukos, whose assets were seized by the Russian government. Here the firm filing the lawsuit is claiming that certain new taxes amount to the taking of (a portion of) its investments against the terms of the treaty.
(Everything I’m saying is very approximate. This is what I’ve gathered, not an expert opinion.)
The existence of such a treaty makes sense to me - there’s a long history of countries seizing the assets of energy companies owned by foreign investors and a country can be better off if it can bind itself not to do that.
