MOSCOW, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- The Kremlin doesn't want to get involved in the corporate spat between TNK-BP shareholders and their British counterparts at BP, the Russian president said.
BP last week filed a complaint in Russia asking a court to cancel a ruling that gave its joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP, rights to access its corporate documents.
A minority shareholder in joint venture TNK-BP sparked the raid when he claimed a failed deal between BP and Russian oil company Rosneft resulted in economic losses of $2.7 billion.
A proposed January deal between BP and Rosneft for work in the arctic collapsed after TNK-BP said the proposal violated terms of its shareholder agreement with BP.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, following talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron, said that neither government wanted to wade too deeply into corporate spates, Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti reports.
Medvedev aide Sergei Prikhodko added that "executive powers, obviously, cannot interfere in this process."
TNK-BP set up a whistle-blowing hotline in January as part of an effort to become a more transparent company, it claimed. Thomas Kiehn, a TNK-BP spokesman, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London last week that corruption in Russia, in general, "is rampant."
