Russian authorities pile up yet more pressure on Yukos

Russian authorities piled up yet more pressure on the embattled Yukos oil giant, issuing a warrant against its chief lawyer and promising to increase its multi-billion-dollar tax bill.

Dmitry Gololobov, the firm's chief attorney, told Interfax that a Russian court sanctioned his arrest on November 12 following a request from the general prosecutor's office, which has been leading the case against Yukos.

Interfax said Gololobov was currently in Britain.

The prosecutor's office said it had issued a warrant for Gololobov on suspicion of embezzling three billion rubles' (104.5 million dollars') worth of shares in a Yukos subsidiary, the Eastern Oil Company, Interfax reported.

Meanwhile an unnamed official with the tax ministry told Interfax that the Yukos tax bill, which currently stands at 18.4 billion dollars for the years of 2000-2002, is likely to jump by at least another six billion dollars as the authorities turn their attention to back debt of 2003.

"They used the same schemes (as during 2002 for which it is alleged to have underpaid 6.7 billion dollars in taxes), but the volume of production and exports increased, so the sum of the tax debt will increase," the official said.

The official also said that the tax burden will increase further as authorities issue additional tax bills to Yukos subsidiaries.

"We have only presented Yukos with (taxes) that concern the head company," the official said. "We are separately checking subsidiaries."

Separately, a chief office manager at Yukos's main subsidiary, Yukos-Moscow, was arrested on suspicion of stealing 22 million rubles (766,550 dollars) from the firm, Yukos officials and Interfax reported.

Yukos has been under fire from prosecutors for most of this year in what many analysts say is a politically motivated case that aims to disassemble the company as punishment for the political ambitions of its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Thursday's news further pressured Yukos shares, which fell by 1.5 percent on the dollar-denominated RTS Index. The shares closed at 2.97 dollars, down more than 80 percent from their one-time high of 16 dollars prior to Khodorkovsky's arrest.

The capitalization of Russia's largest oil producer, once considered its most transparent and best-run and an investor darling, today stands at 6.8 billion dollars, or 37 percent of its outstanding tax bill.

Khodorkovsky has been in jail since his arrest on October 25, facing seven counts of fraud and embezzlement that could land him in jail for 10 years.

The news came a day after tax authorities gave the firm an impossible demand to pay up billions of dollars within hours, raising the spectre of a rapid fire sale of its main production asset.

Investigators descended on the Moscow headquarters of Yukos, a company spokesman told AFP, with another simultaneous raid reported at the Siberian offices of its main production unit.

11/18/2004 - 18:39 GMT - AFP