Here’s a tip for the Securities and Exchange Commission: If you happen to get a Freedom of Information Act request from lawyers representing Russia in the country’s sprawling litigation over the renationalized Yukos Oil Company, take it seriously.

Baker Botts sued the SEC on Tuesday in Houston federal district court, claiming that the agency illegally withheld documents that the firm first requested nearly a year ago. In an 8-page complaint filed by the firm on its own behalf, Baker Botts alleges that the SEC refused to turn over attendance lists, minutes, notes, visitor logs, and other materials from meetings with Yukos representatives in 2002 and 2003, when the company was considering a public listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The complaint seeks the release of the documents and an award of attorneys’ fees.

Russia has been keeping a Baker Botts team led by Michael Goldberg busy for years in connection with Yukos’s fall. The firm represented Gazpromneft in the Yukos Houston bankruptcy proceedings, and currently represents Russia, alongside Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, in the Energy Charter Treaty arbitrations brought by the former majority shareholders of Yukos, seeking more than $100 billion in damages.

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