PARIS (Reuters) - A French court of appeal on Thursday turned down Russia's request to suspend the seizure of Russian assets in France carried out by former shareholders of the defunct oil group Yukos, a lawyer representing the shareholders said.
An international arbitration court ruled last year that Russia must pay $50 billion (35 billion pounds) for expropriating the assets of Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil producer run by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a businessman who used to be Russia's richest man but fell out with the Kremlin.
Yukos shareholders began in June of this year to seize bank accounts and properties in Paris and other parts of France belonging to the Russian Federation.
(Reporting by Gerard Bon; Writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
