Yukos Manager Sacked by Local Government, Writes to Putin

A former acting director general of Yakutgazprom, the subsidiary of Yukos oil company, has been dismissed from his post. The new director general represents the government of Russia’s internal republic of Yakutia on the company’s board of directors, Ekho Moskvy radio station reported Monday.

Yevgeny Yazev had already written letters to the head of the oil and gas committee of the State Duma, and to the Russian president Vladimir Putin claiming a “forced seizure” of Yakutgazprom was planned, Regnum news agency reported.

Afanasy Maksimov, the president of Sakhaneftegaz, the main shareholder in Yakutgazprom, dismissed Yazev on Saturday with the support of Yakutia’s government. After that, Yazev, Pavel Khokhlov, vice president of Sakhaneftegaz, and other managers representing Yukos were forbidden from entering the company building. However, the agency reported citing Sakhaneftegaz sources that Khokhlov had been sacked in autumn.

Maksimov has headed Sakhaneftegaz since Nov. 6, after an invasion into the building. All Yukos managers who had worked in the company moved to the building of Yakutgazprom. Yazev was quoted by Regnum as saying at a press conference that he does not recognize Maksimov as president of Sakhaneftegaz.

The republican directorate of technological and ecological control had found Yazev not satisfying the company’s requirements and recommended he be dismissed. Yazev said it was an attempt to sack him “on far-fetched reasons”.

The governmental representative to the company, Ruslan Shipkov, has sent information on a meeting of Yakutgazprom board of directors to re-elect the director general and to approve an agreement on a pre-term annulment of a 2002 treaty between the company and the republic on use of state property without compensation. The board of directors of Sakhaneftegaz, the main shareholder of Yakutgazprom, has already made the decision to annul the treaty. Yazev said Shipkov is a common member of the board of directors of Yakutgazprom and not the chairman.

(Mosnews, 12.27.2004)