AFP: Yukos executive arrested, Khodorkovsky stays in Siberia

Prosecutors arrested Vasily Aleksanyan, acting vice president of the beleaguered Russian oil firm Yukos, while a court rejected a bid by Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky to move closer to Moscow from his remote Siberian prison.

The NTV television showed policemen pinning Aleksanyan to the floor and screaming "Down!" at him after having broken through his apartment's door.

After Aleksanyan, visibly shocked, was shown escorted to the prosecutor general's office.

"They brought (my client) this evening to the preventive detention center on the Petrovka street. He denied the accusations brought against him as absurd and told me that he intended to declare a hunger strike," his lawyer Gevorg Davgyan said.

Aleksanyan had said previously he expected to be charged with embezzlement and money laundering, allegations which he described as "absurd".

The prosecutor general's office confirmed Aleksanyan's arrest.

"Aleksanyan is under arrest as a suspect and is presently giving a statement to the prosecutor general," Interfax news agency quoted a prosecutor's spokesman as saying.

Davgyan said his client could be held for up to 48 hours as a suspect but his detention could be prolonged if charges are filed against him.

Meanwhile, a Moscow court rejected Khodorkovsky's request to be moved from the penetentiary at Chita in eastern Siberia, to a jail closer to Moscow where he can be closer to his family.

Khodorkovsky, was arrested in 2003 and sentenced last year to eight years in following a landmark trial watched closely as a litmus test of everything from judicial reform to investor's rights and Kremlin economic policy.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia's wealthiest person with fortune believed to exceed 15 billion dollars, was convicted on charges of embezzlement, massive fraud and tax evasion.

On Tuesday, Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Yuri Schmidt accused authorities of seeking to destroy his client physically at the grim prison colony, where he has twice been sentenced to solitary confinement for offenses such as drinking tea in the wrong place and possessing a copy of the ministry of justice directive on the rights of prisoners.

Critics accuse the regime of President Vladimir Putin of persecuting Khodorkovsky in an attempt to reestablish control of the state over Russia's oil reserves and sidelining someone considered too independent and politically ambitious.

The Kremlin has strongly rejected those accusations, saying the case against the company and its founder was strictly an effort to prosecute large-scale crimes.

The Yukos board, in an effort to regain control over the firm's legal assets in Russia, appointed Aleksanyan only on Tuesday to take over the firm. He was the former head of Yukos' legal department.

"It is no coincidence that the arrest concerns the person who was appointed to go to court to stop the pillage," said Yukos chairman, Steven Theede, a US citizen, who is based in London with most other members of the company's management-in-exile.

Theede has been barred from entering Russia and is in conflict with the Moscow-based management which, according to Russian media reports, favors the rapid and total dismantlement of the remainder of the Yukos oil empire.

The company's crown jewel, the oil production unit Yuganskneftegaz, was sold at auction in December 2004 in what the state said was an effort to recuperate back taxes owed by the company for several years valued at more than 20 billion dollars.

The Yugansk unit was snapped up by a never-before-heard-of group, which promptly turned around and sold it to the state-run oil giant Rosneft.

AFP via Turkishpress