Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the main owner of Russia’s embattled oil giant Yukos, on Wednesday moved to dump a Soviet-era central banker who was recently appointed as the firm’s chairman in a bid to end its feud with the state.
Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Anton Drel said that the jailed tycoon will ask Yukos shareholders to remove Viktor Gerashchenko as chairman of the firm that faces bankruptcy because of a crippling tax claim.
Gerashchenko — the Soviet Union’s last central banker who stayed on in the post until 2002 and who has close government ties — was appointed chairman in late April in a bid by Yukos to negotiate with the authorities over the tax ministry’s claims against it.
But Khodorkovsky said Gerashchenko should go because his presence has not only failed to resolve the situation but may have actually put off a negotiated solution.
”Officials are refusing to meet with the board of directors,” Drel was quaoted as saying. ”Moreover, informed officials insist that Gerashchenko’s continued presence on the board of directors will hamper dialogue.”
Drel said: ”We have no other options to regulate the situation except to negotiate with the government.”
Court bailiffs last week began seizing Yukos accounts and making an inventory of assets after the firm failed to meet a deadline to pay $3,4-billion in back taxes for 2000, a claim validated by the courts.
The tax ministry has filed a nearly identical claim for 2001 and has hinted it will also file claims for 2002 and 2003.
Yukos has been prevented from paying the claim by a court order that froze its accounts and assets.
Observers say the investigation against it is Kremlin payback for Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions.
Drel said that Khodorkovsky, who is jailed pending his trial on tax evasion and fraud charges, had asked Gerashchenko to resign from the Yukos board on July 5.
”Since this decision was not taken for whatever reason, Mikhail Khodorkovsky will ask the Yukos general shareholders meeting to decide this question,” Drel said.
Yukos and Khodorkovsky have made several offers to restructure the firm’s debt, but none has received a nod from the authorities.
Many analysts say that authorities aim to break up the firm — Russia’s largest oil producer — and sell its subsidiaries under state supervision. Yukos pumps nearly one in five of the country’s barrels of oil.
Yukos has been under investigation for nearly a year in a case that most observers regard as a political witchhunt against Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man who openly defied President Vladimir Putin by financing opposition parties. — Sapa-AFP