New $1b Yukos fraud alleged

Russian investigators have raided the accounting division of embattled Yukos oil and seized boxes of bookkeeping records for 2003 and 2004.

The Prosecutor General's office said the search was part of an extended probe into the alleged embezzlement of $1.06 billion in 2001, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.

The alleged billion dollar scam was operated through a front company called Fargoil in the central Russian region of Mordovia, Interfax said.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the Moscow trial of Yukos' chief shareholder and former chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky questioned two financial officials Friday, Interfax said.

Yelena Tyapkova, an accountant in the OAO Apatit company, and Konstantin Graudin, a senior specialist in the Menatep bank's investment department, testified as prosecution witnesses in the trial of Yukos chief shareholder and former chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his longtime associates Platon Lebedev and Andrei Krainov, the former general director of the Volna company, Interfax said.

The prosecution is trying to amass prove the defendants conducted gross improprieties in their conduct of Yukos business.

HERE