Service Demands Another $3.3B From Yukos

The Russian Tax Service is demanding another $3.3 billion from the Yukos oil company in back taxes, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday, sending its stock price plunging.

The news came as court bailiffs served the company papers executing the Russian Tax Service's original $3.4 billion tax claim against the company for 2000, giving it five days to comply. The second claim is for taxes in 2001.


Yukos' shares plunged by 12.3 percent on the announcement, Interfax reported.


Yukos had already said that it doesn't have the cash to pay the 2000 back taxes claim up front. On Thursday, the company again pleaded with the government to stagger the payments.


Yukos is prevented by a court order from selling its assets to raise the money. A new back taxes claim would likely prove insurmountable for the company, which is also facing audits for 2002 and 2003.


On Thursday, three bailiffs accompanied by five men in camouflage uniforms served the order, dated Wednesday, and said the company had five days to comply voluntarily, said Alexander Shadrin, a company spokesman. The order also said that the bailiffs must inventory Yukos' property and put a freeze order on it, Shadrin said.


According to Russian law, tax authorities can present the papers to banks where Yukos holds accounts and demand payment within three days.


In a proposal drafted by the company Wednesday, Yukos said it was willing to pay $1.17 billion — a third of the total that it owes for 2000 — stretched over a period of two years, as well as to cover the legal costs of the Tax Service's claim.


The company earlier said it would not pay the remaining amount, which comprises fines, value-added tax charges and penalties, but after the order was delivered Yukos' deputy chairman, Yuri Beilin, told the Interfax news agency that "we will comply with the law and fulfill the decision which has entered into force."


"Yet we still hope that the government will resolve the company's situation in a balanced and socially responsible way and that Yukos will have a chance to reschedule the debt that the court has confirmed," Beilin was quoted as saying.


Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) said last month that Russia "isn't interested in the bankruptcy of such a company as Yukos," raising hope that the Kremlin would be open to some sort of deal.


Analysts see the web of court cases against Yukos and its core shareholders as a Kremlin-directed move to punish former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, for his funding of opposition parties and to ensure that such a key firm in Russia's strategically important oil sector is in the hands of someone more loyal.


In addition to the tax claim case against the company, Khodorkovsky and his close associate Platon Lebedev are being tried on charges including tax evasion and fraud, largely in connection with the 1994 privatization of a state-owned fertilizer plant. Both face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.


Five of Lebedev's lawyers held a news conference Thursday to publicize their concerns over their client's health and treatment in jail. They said they had informed the head of the jail on Tuesday about Lebedev's worsening health condition in connection with chronic liver disease.


Authorities transferred Lebedev to a common cell that very night.


"The main reason is to apply pressure, and the second is ... to deprive him of the possibility of taking active part in the trial," said one of Lebedev's lawyers, Yevgeny Baru.



HERE