Yukos Lawyer Summoned As Company Appeals

Prosecutors tightened the screws on Yukos on Monday, calling in the oil giant's top in-house lawyer for questioning after searching his office and apartment on the same day the company challenged a freeze on its subsidiaries' bank accounts.

In the latest steps against Russia's biggest oil producer, prosecutors are seeking to collect $2.6 billion from the frozen accounts of subsidiaries of Yukos, which courts have ruled owes $3.4 billion in back taxes for 2000.

The company appealed the freeze in a letter to prosecutors in which it repeated an earlier warning that the company could be forced to cut output if cash-flow at the production units is hampered.

Russian authorities claim such warnings are a publicity ploy, and analysts doubt that President Vladimir Putin would allow a fall in crude output in an industry that accounts for much of Russia's budget intake and has driven the country's recent economic growth.

The letter posted on Yukos' Web site said the company would be opening new accounts for its subsidiaries.

A day after the news of the account freeze last week, the Tax Ministry filed a revised back-tax claim of $4.1 billion for 2001. More claims - which must be upheld by a court before they can be enforced - are expected to follow. Analysts anticipate a final bill of more than $10 billion for the 2000-2003 period.

Adding to Yukos' most recent spate of woes, chief in-house lawyer Dmitry Gololobov was ordered to appear before prosecutors for questioning about alleged asset-stripping by Yukos managers at the Eastern Oil Co. after its acquisition by Yukos.

"I see this as absolute repression," Interfax reported Gololobov as saying. "I have given numerous explanations in the Eastern Oil Co. case and the investigators have never made any claim against me."

Yukos spokesman Alexander Shadrin told the agency that summoning Gololobov and confiscating documents and computers was aimed at weakening the company's legal defense.

The yearlong campaign against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yukos' jailed billionaire owner, and the company he built has been cast by the Kremlin as a clampdown on shady business practices, though observers see it as a politically motivated reaction to Khodorkovsky's growing clout and his funding of opposition groups.

HERE