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Identity of yukos buyer remains a mystery { December 21 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14940-2004Dec20.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14940-2004Dec20.html
Identity of Yukos Buyer Remains a Mystery
Analysts Speculate On Group That Won Auction for Key Unit
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A20
MOSCOW, Dec. 20 -- Analysts around the capital sought Monday to identify the mysterious group that bought a $9.3 billion majority stake in the Yuganskneftegaz oil fields in Siberia, the prime asset of the moribund Russian oil giant Yukos.
On Sunday, BaikalFinansGroup offered a single bid at an auction for the fields, which were seized by the government from Yukos to cover unpaid back taxes that reached $28 billion. Baikal's purchase amounts to 76 percent of the Yukos unit.
Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas behemoth and the expected buyer, declined to bid for the oil field, although its representatives showed up to participate in the sale conducted by the Federal Property Fund. The Siberian fields pump 1 million barrels of oil a day and account for 60 percent of Yukos's output.
Baikal was set up a month ago in the western city of Tver, and the address provided at the auction is reportedly the premises of a grocery and a cell phone store. There was no additional information Monday about the company.
News media could only speculate about the real owners of the group. A journalist at Echo Moskvy radio asked a government spokesman how he knew that the person behind the sale was not Osama bin Laden, if he had no information about the sale.
"I can assure you that he is not" the buyer, said the spokesman, before hanging up.
Yukos officials described the auction and its outcome as a joke.
"The auction was as farcical as the process being used by the Russians' false tax claims against Yukos," the company's chief executive, Steven M. Theede, said in a meeting with reporters in London. Theede and Yukos's chief financial officer, Bruce Misamore, fled Moscow last month fearing that they would be arrested. Yukos's founder and former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has been in prison since his arrest in October 2003. He faces charges of fraud and tax evasion.
"The authorities have given themselves a wonderful Christmas present -- they have destroyed the most effective oil company in Russia," Khodorkovsky said in a statement released from prison by his attorneys.
Theede said Yukos would not turn over shares in the seized oil fields until the buyer revealed its identity.
All the major Russian energy players have denied backing Baikal, which at first was thought to be a front for Gazprom so that it would not be the only participant in the Yuganskneftegaz auction.
Analysts are still convinced that a major Russian player, possibly Gazprom with financing from other Russian companies, including Surgutneftegaz, a cash-rich private firm, are behind the purchase. They interpret the use of Baikal as a ploy to buy time while a temporary U.S. court injunction barring Gazprom from participating in the sale plays out.
"There is a good interpretation and a nasty interpretation," said Chris Weafer, an analyst at Moscow's Alfa Bank. "The good interpretation is that Baikal was pulled off the shelf to help Gazprom sidestep its problems in the U.S. and this is a short-term measure before it's passed on to Gazprom. The nasty interpretation is that Baikal is a bunch of state bureaucrats who got the money from Kremlin-friendly companies and will pass Yuganskneftegaz onto Gazprom at a higher price with a tidy profit for themselves."
Yukos insisted that it would track down whoever bought its oil fields and whoever financed the purchase.
"The so-called winners of this process along with any entity that supports them has subjected their businesses to considerable legal risks," the company said in a statement.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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