On June 17, 2015, Rosneft shareholders meeting is expected to approve the company’s credit agreements with the Russian Regional Development Bank, VTB and Gazprombank worth 9.9 trillion rubles in total, which is 2.5 times more than a year ago. Rosneft assures that the agreement doesn’t necessarily mean the company will immediately loan the whole amount and that 9.9 trillion rubles is just a total volume of treasury transactions. However, one shouldn’t take on trust Rosneft’s assurance – everyone in Russia knows what happens, when the company starts borrowing money. In December 2014, for instance, it resulted in significant ruble depreciation. By the way, in 2015 alone Rosneft will have to pay back around $16.35 billion to its creditors so they will have to keep borrowing.

But the most curious thing is a possible approval of these agreements at the annual shareholders meeting, rather than getting the credit itself. Who approves what and to whom? Will Igor Sechin be asking only himself? Will anyone ask Bob Dudley just for the sake of respect? “It’s an ordinary corporative procedure,” – says Rosneft, but it looks really strange: inspectee (Rosneft) and inspector (Rosneftegas) are represented by one person – Igor Ivanovich Sechin. In the first case he is president, chief executive and deputy chairman, in the second case he is a key board member. There is one more important person though – Larisa Kalanda, who is vise-president and deputy chief executive at Rosneft and, you probably won’t believe, interim general director at Rosneftegaz.

This weird interpenetration must be boggling the mind of BP’s representative in Rosneft Robert Dudley. However, no one at Rosneft seems to be caring about his opinion as well as about the company’s minority shareholders’ thoughts.