Energy giant Rosneft, which acquired the Yukos assets after its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was jailed, said that all its dealings were lawful.
Mr Lavrov responded to an initial report of the verdict on Monday at a briefing, saying: "It goes without saying that Russia — the agencies that represent Russia in this case — will use all the legal options it has to uphold its position."
Rosneft said in a statement that it "considers that all its deals in acquiring Yukos’s former assets and also all its other actions towards Yukos were fully lawful and were carried out according to the legislation in force". Yukos was sold off in opaque auctions to state companies led by Rosneft.
The government firm was then a small player but today stands as the world’s biggest publicly traded producer of oil.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled that Russia forced Yukos, formerly owned by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, into bankruptcy with excessive tax claims and sold its assets to state-owned businesses.
"The tribunal specifically and unanimously confirmed that the attacks by the Russian Federation on Yukos oil company… were politically motivated," said executive director of GML (the main shareholder) Tim Osborne, in London.
Yukos was once Russia’s biggest oil company but was broken up after Mr Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, shortly after President Vladimir Putin warned Russia’s growing class of oligarchs against meddling in politics.
Mr Khodorkovsky — who was released last year after spending more than a decade in prison — is no longer a shareholder and is no longer involved in the company.
The claims against Moscow were brought in 2005 by Hulley Enterprises and Veteran Petroleum, two subsidiaries of former majority shareholder GML, both based in Cyprus.
A claim was also brought by Veteran Petroleum, the pension fund set up by GML for the benefit of former Yukos employees. The claimants had wanted a total compensation package of $100bn, four times their total investments in the now-defunct firm, to take into account what it would be worth today, plus interest.
The arbitral tribunals at the PCA unanimously held that the Russian Federation had effectively expropriated the claimants’ assets, the court’s website noted.
Russia had been ordered to pay "in excess of $50bn" after the finding that it had forced Yukos into bankruptcy with excessive tax claims and sold its assets to state-owned businesses, said the head of Shearman & Sterling’s International Arbitration Group, Emmanuel Gaillard, who represented the claimants.
The award was the "largest in arbitration history", GML said.
"This is a historic award," said Mr Gaillard. "It is now judicially established that the Russian Federation’s actions were not a legitimate exercise in tax collection but, rather, were aimed at destroying Yukos and illegally expropriating its assets for the benefit of state instrumentalities Rosneft and Gazprom."
Despite the award being about half the original claim, Mr Gaillard said the ruling was "a great day for the rule of law". He said there was "no reason to believe that Russia will not satisfy its international obligations", saying there was no chance of appeal.
