Yukos’s jailed founder accused the Russian government of ”destroying” the nation’s top oil group on Monday as mystery surrounded the new owner of its crown jewel, widely seen as linked to state-run gas giant Gazprom.
In an auction cloaked in secrecy on Sunday, the Russian authorities broke up Yukos, the country’s largest oil producer, selling its main subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz, to an unknown entity, Baikalfinansgroup, for $9,35-billion (about R53,7-billion).
Mikhail Khodorkovsky — Yukos’s main shareholder and a powerful Kremlin opponent who has been behind bars since October 2003 — lashed out over the sale as lawyers for the ousted proprietors threatened legal action that could last for years.
”The state has offered itself a wonderful Christmas present, destroying the most efficient oil company in Russia,” the billionaire tycoon said in a statement released by his lawyers as he appeared in court for a trial hearing.
Although Gazprom denied it is connected to the successful bid, observers are of the view that it had employed a scheme to sidestep the threat of United States lawsuits from Yukos.
”Gazprom used a front to buy Yuganskneftegaz,” leading Russian daily Izvestia splashed across its front page.
”By hiding behind a completely unknown company, Gazprom is seeking to protect itself from US justice,” the newspaper said.
Gazprom, a vast opaque company that is the world’s largest gas producer, had been seen as the favourite to win the auction, fulfilling a Kremlin ambition to restore state control over vital oil resources.
But a US court order obtained by Yukos in Houston, Texas, last week barring Gazprom from participating in the sale had raised the threat of damaging US legal action and the gas monopoly at the last minute withdrew from the bidding.
Baikal, a firm with no telephone and an address in Tver, a city north-west of Moscow, was only registered as a company on December 15, the Vremya Novostei daily reported.
Legal action
Yukos has vowed to sue any new owner of Yugansk, and lawyers for its main shareholders said on Monday that they will take legal action in the US and Europe once the identity of the ultimate buyer is clear.
”We will be litigating against the new owner and other parties. The concept of using a shell in order to shield Gazprom is definitely a possibility,” Sanford Saunders, a US lawyer acting for the Yukos shareholders, said by telephone from London.
”There will be multiple claims, in the US, Britain and elsewhere in Western Europe,” he said. Yukos lawyers have warned they will seek to impound Gazprom’s gas exports.
Baikal, which won the auction in the best traditions of the murky Russian 1990s privatisations, may in fact represent Kremlin-friendly private oil firm Surgutneftegaz, which could resell the asset to Gazprom later, reports said.
”It is the only company which has the cash for such a deal,” a Gazprom manager told the Vedomosti business daily, referring to Surgut, a firm awash in billions of petrodollars that is run by Soviet-era oil man Vladimir Bogdanov.
A government official close to Gazprom management said that the aim of the transaction was to avoid US legal action.
”The most simple method today [for Gazprom] is to buy Yugansk from a totally unknown winner of the auction and become a legally irreproachable owner,” he told Vedomosti.
Death blow
The forced sale represents a death blow for Yukos, which Khodorkovsky had built it into Russia’s most Western-like company before he was arrested at gunpoint on his corporate jet on a Siberian airfield to face trial on fraud and tax-evasion charges.
Yugansk pumps a million barrels a day, representing about 60% of oil produced by Yukos, and accounted for more than 70% of its reserves.
The sale of 76,8% of Yugansk was officially to pay off massive tax bills of $27,5-billion levied on Yukos, denounced by the company as a state-directed expropriation.
Russian officials said on Sunday they will proceed with other Yukos asset sales to settle the remaining tax debts, estimated at about $9,3-billion since some of the bill has already been paid off from oil revenues. — Sapa-AFP