A DECADE on from Vladimir Putin’s expropriation and dismemberment of Yukos, things are not going quite to plan. The Russian oil company was seized from its owners, then bankrupted and broken up after being accused, on flimsy evidence, of tax evasion. Its boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky (pictured), was jailed. Yukos’s livid shareholders sued the government, and after years of legal wrangling began to score victories. The biggest came in 2014: a $50 billion award against Russia by a court in The Hague, a record for an international arbitration. The judges ruled unanimously that Russia had breached the terms of an international charter that protects cross-border investment. Moscow refused to pay up, sending Yukos’s well-resourced former owners into a hunt to seize assets—and creating a headache for the Kremlin. On April 20th a Dutch court is expected to hand down another ruling in the case.

Under an international convention, arbitration rulings are enforceable in any of the 156 signatory countries. The former majority owners’ holding company, GML (which is 70%-owned by Israel-based Leonid Nevzlin), has sought court orders to grab Russian state assets in America, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, India and the Netherlands. Some have already been frozen in France and Belgium, including assets in France worth €1 billion ($1.13 billion)—among them buildings, money held by the French arm of a Russian bank, and a firm’s debt to a Russian satellite operator.

Any state asset is fair game, as long as it is not diplomatic. Several properties have been targeted, only for a plaque to be affixed to the building a day or two later, announcing it to be an annexe of the Russian embassy. The asset-hunters are careful to take photographs of facades before applying for asset-freezes, so they can provide before-and-after pictures as evidence.

Having reluctantly taken part in the arbitration, Russia is now trying to get the ruling set aside with help from a blue-chip American law firm, White & Case. It says the tribunal lacked jurisdiction because Russia signed, but did not ratify, the energy charter. And it claims the charter was designed to protect foreign investments, not those made by Russians. (The tribunal rejected both arguments; the relevant corporate entities were registered outside Russia.) Moscow also accuses the arbitrators of committing “gross violations”: it alleges that an assistant at the three-person tribunal acted improperly as a fourth arbitrator, basing its conclusions on an analysis of the large number of hours he worked and the ruling’s writing style. It is on these matters that the Dutch court will rule on April 20th.

A Russian state investigative committee recently said it was close to amassing “proof” that Mr Khodorkovsky and his associates got their shares in Yukos through an elaborate theft, hid them in a web of shell companies, and therefore have no right to compensation. Now they are employing “another scam using international courts”, said a committee spokesman.

This is part of a pattern of Russia changing its line of argument as it has grown more desperate, says Tim Osborne, a lawyer for the former majority shareholders. It is now “grasping at an ‘unclean hands’ argument” that it did not focus on in the past, he argues, referring to the allegation that Yukos was acquired by theft.

Moscow has supplemented its arguments with threats. It has told America, Belgium and France that any action against Russian property will be considered grounds for retaliation against not only their governments, but their citizens and companies too. Russia’s Duma has passed legislation permitting tit-for-tat seizures.

Much as this may show disregard for the rule of international law, some of those at whom the bear has shown its claws appear unready to fight. In February the Belgian foreign ministry intervened in enforcement proceedings at Russia’s request, threatening a bailiff involved in auctioning a seized building in Brussels used by a Russian news agency. The mandarins feared that going ahead with the sale could provoke a “major diplomatic incident”.

Don’t need no money

As the game of cat-and-mouse continues, the dispossessed shareholders will go after more stuff. They say they may set their sights on the assets of Rosneft and Gazprom, two state energy giants. Russia, meanwhile, is fighting to get blocked assets unfrozen. This week a $700m payment to its space agency was released after a court deemed it to be separate from the state.

Expect this to turn into a legal ultra-marathon. The upcoming ruling in The Hague is subject to appeal, all the way to the Dutch Supreme Court. That could take five years. Assuming there is no settlement, the enforcement process could last another ten. An estimated $300m-400m has already been spent on lawyers, with Russia outspending its gadflies two to one.

Mr Khodorkovsky—now the Kremlin’s leading critic-in-exile—is not directly involved in the case, having sold his stake long ago. (“I don’t need the $50 billion,” he says.) But he is not without an opinion. As the battle rumbles on, it could “expose the weakness” of Mr Putin’s regime, he believes, because it “feeds the perception that they can’t deal with me.”