Member Info for rickyroman

....its very easy to go 'oh, well if I'd known that, I would have got out'. Everyone is forgetting that two legal teams went through this claim with a fine toothcomb and in particular the Calunius team. They had to make a recommendation of 'likely outcome' to their paymasters and been pretty convincing with their argument. If Oxus were not claiming for sunk costs, what were they going to do, write them off because those Uzbeks were a bunch of nice guys. Can you imagine the fear for personal safety which the Oxus staff must have experienced when a AMG Merc pulled into their yard and a bunch of leather jacketted, sunglass wearing thugs got out. That article is absolute piffle and I give no credibility to the author.

I think I will treat that article as 'tosh' put out by the Uzbeks to one of their mates in Latvia.......nothing new there in my opinion.

....as we wait and wait and.....w a i t.....I have often wondered what became of Vladlenin. He obviously had a better understanding of Uzbekistan, than most of us and I guess a hefty investment too.It seems extraordinary he just completely disappeared, just like RS, without comment or opinion. Was Vlad just a 'nom de plume' for Richard Shead - stranger things have happened......

..rebel....the Uzbeks have over $15 billion of foreign reserves outside the country and produce over a million tonnes of cotton pa. which is paid for in dollars. Its like any sort of distressed debt it will be sold for a fraction of its face value - the price is reflected by the risk. Someone might reckon its worth a couple of million dollars if the award was made by UNICTRAL....might take two years to realise through the courts but $10 million for a two million dollar risk...someone would be interested. All supposition for now.

...I guess the ninety days to lodge the appeal will be up soon. I know we debated 90 working or 90 calendar days, but the clock is ticking. I will be genuinely surprised if they lodge an appeal, Calunius / Gretton will have sold on the debt for a couple of $$ million and the file will be closed on shareholders, creditors will be lucky yo get anything after BDO's fees are deducted. I am curious to know what happened to FunkyGibbon, as a holder of a big chunk of Oxus equity, he must have been on first name terms with Shead and must have wanted an answer to his huge loss... If you are out there Mr Gibbon, give us an update or tell us what you think may have happened. Cheers.

....have got their money back, but will they get paid ?? White & Case would have slapped their invoice in and headed for the door saying 'probably a good idea if you paid the $10 million and put a line under this...have you seen the price of gold recently....you've got a right result' !! Appeal - I don't see it, that one line about parter led was just a sop to the shareholders....if there was any intention it would have been sorted by now. BUT - once its all over I want to know what happened and if that means tracking down Richard Shead to his house, so be it. We are due an audience and an explanation. .....and what about Said Ashurov.....jeez, that poor chap is still banged up in some Uzbek hell-kole.

....as this hurtles towards oblivion, I thought I would look back at my history of the share. First purchased in Nov 2006 and bought 10,000 @ all in £2069.69. This must have been on a roll at that time as four days later I sold the 10,000 to net £1002.85 profit - should have stopped there. Instead, over the next eight years I added 200,000 - yes, and lost the lot....!!.

...uncanny how similar the two sums are.....was this even more of a stitch-up by the arbitrators to balance the books and all by year end. There is something about this whole case which does not stack up. None of us are lawyers but our legal team must have some idea what went wrong - after four years of deliberation ??? I would like RS to give an audience to a handful of our board and say ' look guys, I've left now, but this is what happened', Just to give us some closure and to know why we lost.

Brody Greenwald profile on Linkedin - this doesn't sound good - Uzbekistan prevailed in obtaining the dismissal of more than 99 percent of the claimed US$ 1.33 billion in damages, and the amount awarded was less than the amount owed by Oxus to the Ministry of Finance. If we allegedly owe the Uzbeks some $$$ millions, there is going to be zero chance of getting anything back. RS walks away a broken man and administrators wind up the remaining issues.......I have to admit that now I finally think it is all over - 4 years and £!0,000 wasted / lost. We were all totally shafted by unscrupulous persons (Uzbeks / White & Case) and non-level playing field. Don't forget Funky Gibbon - he lost a fortune too....!

...for clearing that one up, I was incensed with anger thinking it was Said, particularly as he was suffering from such poor health.

.....don't know if this has already been posted, but over on ADVFN they say that our senior metallurgist in fact died five years ago. I have no way of confirming this other than their lead was the New York Times. Reading it made my blood boil and my anger is directed towards White & Case - what sort of morals do people like that have ??....simply the morals of the gutter.

....is anyone else following the chat over on advfn.....either 1zabrina is extremely knowledgeable (from the inside) or a complete dreamer and fantasist. Worth a look because she comes up with some interesting reasoning for challenging the UNCITRAL decision. We have until the end of the month for RS / Calunius to layout their case or accept defeat. I still believe RS expected a win.......why use the word devastated ? Disappointed, unhappy with, baffled by......devastated is an emotional word. Like all of us, he wasn't expecting to lose so comprehensively.... Maybe game on.....let's hope so.

....all working, no problem. Biggest issue is the $10 million and whether Calunius have first call on that. Firstly the Uzbeks are unlikely to pay up for months or years if they know there might be a challenge to the verdict, because it will be their money funding it....how ironic if it happened. I personally think Calunius and the legal expenses / team will grab the $$$ and the business will be wound up. Secondly, could we all go through another five years of this with no certainty to the outcome. The biggest losers are Richard Shead and Said Ashurov...........RS has wasted half a decade on the fight and poor Said, his incarceration conditions must be like hell on earth and now with no end to it.

.....doesn't quite stack up if the Russian state have just hired Lamm (White & Case) to challenge the judgement in the YUKOS claim. The downside is that this is expected to take a decade to pass through the American legal system. Meanwhile at Oxus....a lot of unanswered questions here and we will have to wait to see the reasoning behind why, our claims were dismissed. I don't think Shead, Calunius or our legal team were expecting this, nor 90% of us. I never expected a mega payout maybe at best, the same as Vlad c.17p / share, but not nil and a derisory $10 million overpayment of tax. I still feel very uncomfortable about the ruling, the time period of 4.5 years, the repeated Tim Hart valuations and the level of confidence expressed by RS. Why say anything if you know we have lost........he didn't know....something happened in the last throes of the case.........but what ??????

...the arbitrators....you would have to say that 'on the balance of probability' and with their track record and bullyboy tactics the Uzbeks were guilty. How does the arbitration panel work...in a bubble ...excluding the reality of life in Uzbekistan. I find that difficult to believe.

...I have just been reading about the destruction of the Aral Sea and how it finally dried up completely in the summer of 2014. Prime movers in this ecological disaster being centralised planning by Moscow in 60's and the further 'dash for cotton' by the regime in Tashkent after 1991. The sheer scale of this catastrophe is unbelievable, the destruction of eco-systems by diverting rivers and creating deserts + rank stupidity by the Uzbek authorities (read vested interests). 60% of the water they divert is lost due to poor irrigation canals, they pour more water onto their crops to flush out the salts which then leaves even more salts, there is no crop rotation so more and more pesticides and fertilisers are used......and they still use child 'slave labour' in spite of stating they would stop in 2012. All this incompetence feeds down from the top.....and oh, yes they are ranked alongside North Korea as one of the most repressive regimes on earth !! So, White & Case (Lamm) are there trying to defend these monsters and win on some 'point of law'. I know they defended Gadaffi at arbitration too - nice people, maybe......just rather questionable ethics.

......I think most of us are now at a loss to understand the workings of this arbitration tribunal. How can it take 4.5 years to come to a decision. The cruellest of results would be for us to lose and effectively wasted the last five years. However, allowing for the inevitable hostility towards us by Brigitte Stern, it cannot have escaped the panel that the daughter of the president along with senior members of the ruling party, went on a looting spree, expropriating assets across the country, many belonging to foreign owners such as Oxus. This has to weigh in our favour, Oxus was not a one-off, but a signature of the regime.......we will take what we want, when we want and tough luck if you are on the receiving end. I live in France and I believe two of the arbitrators live here. Things will be winding down next week, so no decision now, will mean 2016........................unbelievable.........

2012, 2013, 2014 and now 2015 - four complete years and still no ruling.......its unbelievable and I cannot understand why. Yukos was a highly complex situation involving one of the largest oil producing companies in the world, huge political decisions emanating from both the Kremlin and Rosneft and..... its CEO imprisoned in Siberia. But this,.. a Mickey Mouse AIM listed company v a corrupt Central Asian Republic. How can it take four years to decide ?? I am now of the opinion that there is no prescribed period for these arbitrations. The three panellists (for want of a better word) flit from case to case, under no pressure whatsoever to make a decision and all the time hiding under the aegis of 'If we take a long time we will be seen to be doing our job properly' What a load of old tosh, three intelligent former lawyers do not need to spend four years studying the evidence to come to a decision. I bought my first tranche of shares in Oxus in 2007. When we went to arbitration I thought late 2014 as worst case scenario, now its going to be 2016......five years after we started proceedings.....I am well and truly p***ed off with UNCITRAL.

....wow, I used to own AAL shares when they were nearly 10X this current price. Now have just 1000 at an average of 624p and I thought that was good. The question is...how bad is the situation or is this a screaming BUY for the potential upturn 2016/17. It cannot have escaped Mick Davis that this is now a very cheap FTSE100 resource company and Minas Rio a 25mtpa $29/30 per tonne cost iron ore mine sitting at its heart, never mind the copper, platinum and coal businesses + de Beers. Could it go bust with the bondholders taking over. I personally think a rights issue is now more on the cards but we did recently get nearly $2 billion from the sale of Tarmac & Norte....come on Mr Davis, lets have a bid !!!.

...I haven't done the arithmetic but one has to think 'what the hell have they been doing to take so long. There is only so much information to be investigated, so much equipment to be valued, so much potential earnings to be deliberated. Maybe they only get together once a month and Oxus is just one of their many cases. Who knows ?? I think we are all tired of this and a possible outcome could easily be way south of what many are expecting. I've resigned myself to 5p / share and would not be unhappy with Vlad's 17p......anything above 25p would be life changing......so I'll stick to 5p !!...for now