Finance minister's comments push Yukos shares up

Shares in Yukos rose as much as 9 per cent on Monday after Alexei Kudrin, the Russian finance minister, said the government was in talks with the oil group on settling its $3.4bn tax claim.

Hopes of a possible compromise deal that could avert the bankruptcy of Yukos, pushed the shares up and in mid morning trade on Monday they were trading 6.36 per cent higher at $9.20.

Meanwhile, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian tycoon facing $1bn in fraud and tax evasion charges, has no intention of quitting Russia if and when he is released from any criminal sentence, his lawyer said on Sunday.

Anton Drel, responsible for Mr Khodorkovksy's business affairs and criminal defence, told the Financial Times in an interview: "He confirmed to me that he does not want to leave Russia. He wants to live here and to carry out social and charitable work."

His comments came after the opening last week of Mr Khodorkovsky's trial and that of his principal business partner Platon Lebedev more than seven months after the former was arrested and nearly a year after the latter was detained. Both have been held ever since.

Two other politically influential business oligarchs, Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, both left for self-imposed exile in order to escape criminal prosecution that they claimed was politically motivated.

Many have speculated that Mr Khodorkovsky might receive a light sentence, in what is widely seen as another politically determined trial, in exchange for abandoning his controlling stake in the oil group Yukos and leaving Russia, reducing his ability to interfere in the country's development during President Vladimir Putin's second term.

Mr Drel confirmed that Mr Khodorkovsky had recently passed out the message that he and his partners were willing to assume some unspecified costs - through shares, cash or other support - triggered by heavy additional tax bills imposed by the authorities on Yukos, which could bankrupt the company.

However, he added that there had been no response from the authorities, before or after a statement from Mr Putin last week that it was not in the interests of the Russian government to bankrupt Yukos. The president added that all the commercial and criminal matters around the company should be handled by the courts.

"Yukos core shareholders support the Yukos management and board of directors acting in the best interests of all shareholders," Mr Drel said, stressing that his client's top priority was to preserve the company as a going concern.

"Mr Khodorkovsky is very nervous, not about his shares and money, but about Yukos, which is his child and was and probably still is the best company in Russia."

The comments seemed to support recent initiatives by Yukos executives to propose to the authorities ways to reduce Mr Khodorkovsky's stake and sell off assets with government approval to raise the money and avoid bankruptcy.

HERE