Shearman & Sterling has successfully acted for former shareholders of the Yukos oil company in the largest arbitration award in history, defeating the Russian Federation – a client of Baker Botts and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton – in the process.

The Hague's arbitration court today (28 July) unanimously ruled that Russia must pay $50bn (£29.5bn) in damages to Yukos' shareholders GML, following a decade-long legal battle.

The awards detail a breakdown of the fees incurred by the various parties during the lengthy arbitration. Shearman racked up more than $60m (£35.3m) in fees – covering more than 130,000 hours of work by paralegals and lawyers – which Russia must now pay.

Combined fees for Cleary and Baker Botts stood at $27m (£16m), for approximately 62,500 hours of advice.

The tribunal found that Yukos was subject to a series of "politically-motivated attacks by the Russian authorities that eventually led to its destruction" and bankruptcy, which allowed Russia to assign the company's assets to Rosneft and Gazprom, and subsequently jail majority owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky (pictured) had previously given "signs of becoming a political competitor" to the Kremlin.

"This is a great day for the rule of law," said Emmanuel Gaillard, head of international arbitration at Shearman. "A superpower like the Russian Federation is held accountable for its violations of international law by an independent arbitral tribunal of the highest possible calibre".

"The award is final and binding, and is now enforceable in 150 States under the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards", added Yas Banifatemi, head of Shearman's public international practice, who acted alongside Gaillard on the matter.

Other lawyers on Shearman's team included Paris counsel Jennifer Younan, as well as arbitration partners Coralie Darrigade in Paris and Mark McNeill in London.

Philippe Pinsolle, who in 2012 departed Shearman to set up the Paris office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, also took part in the early stages of the arbitration.

Cleary's team included Paris arbitration partner Claudia Annacker, New York partner Lawrence Friedman, London-based David Sabel, and Washington DC partner Matthew Slater.

In November 2010, Baker Botts joined the respondents' team, which included Houston partner Michael Goldberg, and London partners Jay Alexander, Johannes Koepp and Alejandro Escobar.

Shearman successfully claimed Russia had manufactured a pretext for the takeover of the company by fabricating $24bn (£14bn) in tax debt, before then transferring oilfield claims to the state-owned companies and the company's liquidation in November 2007.

In 2003, Yukos was the largest oil company in Russia in terms of daily crude oil production, with 100,000 employees and a market capitalization of $33bn (£19.4bn).

After Shearman and its client notified Russia of its claims in October 2004, the arbitration began in February the following year. In 2009, the arbitral tribunal ordered that Russia was bound by the Energy Charter Treaty, despite it not having been ratified by the Russian Duma.

Shearman's team in the most recent phase of the case included 27 lawyers and 7 paralegals.

The arbitral panel was headed by former Norton Rose chairman Yves Fortier QC, CMS von Erlach Poncet founding partner Charles Poncet, and Judge Stephen Schwebel, each of whom were awarded more than €1.5m for their work on the arbitration.

"By any standard…these have been mammoth arbitrations," said the panel, in its summary of the case.