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China Loans Russia $6 Bln for Yukos Deal Tue Feb 1,11:46 AM ET - Reuters By Darya Korsunskaya and Mikhail Yenukov MOSCOW (Reuters) - China lent Russia $6 billion to help the Kremlin renationalize the key unit of oil major YUKOS, officials said on Tuesday, underpinning oil-hungry Beijing's efforts to tap into Russia's huge energy business. China, the world's No. 2 oil consumer, is scrambling to satisfy surging oil demand by picking up assets that are politically or commercially untenable for Western majors in places such as Iran or Russia - the world's No.2 oil exporter. Yugansk was put up...

Aristotle warned some bravado boys during his age “not to make any threats just because you have to.” It is stupid, perhaps suicidal, to posture aggressively, threatening sleeping powers that mean no harm, just because of a thorn up one rich macho boy’s backside. The U.S. lawyers hired by Russian banking and finance group Menatep and former owners and managers of Yukos oil company, who have immeasurable assets in Western vaults, acting on behalf of the Russian bravado boy Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- now in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison on charges of fraud, forgery, tax evasion and worse -- are threatening...

Yukos oil supplies "have been suspended" From Poland A.M. Russian oil giant Yukos, whose main oil fields have just been renationalized, is cutting off its supplies to Central Europe, including Poland and Hungary. "Supplies have been suspended," Grupa Lotos spokesman Marcin Zachowicz told Gazeta Wyborcza. PKN Orlen declined to comment on the situation. "We had to suspend the fulfillment of several key contracts for oil exports. Over the past two days, we have informed our clients that we are forced to do so due to a 'force majeure'," said John Lush, general director of Petroval, Yukos' export arm. He added,...

It is difficult not to feel sympathy for a man confined to Russia's grim prison system, yet the letter by Mikhail Khodorkovsky printed by Vedomosit and The Moscow Times in December as neither a plea for leniency nor an acknowledgement of past errors. Instead, Khodorkovsky's letter constitutes a broad-brush condemnation of the political direction of Russia, by implication justifying the disastrous abuses of and by the Russian state during the late Yeltsin years when Khodorkovsky and his ilk held absolute power. Memories can be short, and a reply is called for. Khodorkovsky rails against the rapacious bureaucracy, predicting that the...

India bids $2 Billion for part of Russian oil giant Yukos – a jackpot victory over China or a bid to win Russian Roulette? Balaji Reddy, Special Correspondent January 13, 2005 India’s Oil and Natural gas Corp (ONGC) is bidding to take a stake of 15% on Russian oil giant Yukos now reorganized, nationalized and known as Yugansk. ONGC with market capitalization of US Dollar 25 Billion is also ready to provide the Russian oil giant a similar amount in loan. India imports 70% of its oil from the world and the growing middleclass of India does not understand that...

Jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has transferred his controlling stake in oil giant Yukos to a business partner, according to a Russian newspaper. Mr Khodorkovsky handed over his 59.5% stake in holding company Group Menatep - which controls Yukos - to Leonid Nevzlin, the daily Vedomosti reported.A close ally of the ex-Yukos boss, Mr Nevzlin is currently based in Israel. Vedomosti said Mr Khodorkovsky handed over his stake after the forced sale of Yukos's core oil production unit. Court statement Yuganskneftegaz was sold off at auction in December last year, eventually falling into the hands of state oil firm Rosneft in...

Italian companies will bid for YUKOS assets if they are allowed, Italian Industry Minister Antonio Marzano told journalists in Abu Dhabi, Reuters reported. Italy's top oil firm Eni said in November 2004 it would not bid for key production unit Yuganskneftegaz. It reconsidered its position after the December auction. YUKOS maintained control over Samaraneftegaz, Tomskneft, Vostsibneftegaz and a number of refineries after bailiffs had forced the sale of Yuganskneftegaz to ensure recovery of overdue taxes. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston will hold headings to consider an appeal filed by YUKOS on the recovery of USD20bn in penalties from the...

MOSCOW - When President Vladimir Putin recently booted one of his top advisers out of a key post, many Kremlin-watchers thought the man probably had it coming. After all, liberal economist Andrei Illarionov had used the indelicate phrase "scam of the year" to describe the government's gutting of oil giant Yukos. He also had ridiculed the Kremlin's bungled interventions in the recent Ukrainian presidential election. But Putin's demotion of the naughty Illarionov from his inner circle was far more than an overdue wrist slap or personnel shuffle, analysts said. And it begged the larger, nagging question: Where is Putin taking...

PARIS (AFP) - The beleagured Russian oil giant Yukos has said it will file a 20-billion-dollar (15-billion-euro) damage claim against the Russian government and other parties that had a hand in the forced auction of its chief production unit, a report said. The Financial Times newspaper said late Thursday in its on-line edition that the claim would lodged just ahead of a February 16 court hearing in Houston, Texas on a bankruptcy petition by Yukos. Yukos last month sought bankruptcy protection from a Houston court in a bid to thwart the auction of its core asset, Yuganskneftegaz, which had pumped...

Putin Demotes Adviser Critical of the Kremlin By C. J. CHIVERS OSCOW, Jan. 3 - President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday abruptly reduced the responsibilities of a senior adviser who last week issued a sweeping criticism of the Kremlin's leadership and expressed deep misgivings about the direction in which Russia was headed.In a presidential decree released without further comment, Mr. Putin relieved the adviser, Andrei N. Illarionov, of his duties as Russia's envoy to the Group of 8, comprising the world's major industrialized nations and Russia. Mr. Putin reassigned those duties to a presidential aide who is seemingly a more...

President Vladimir Putin has defended the Russian state’s takeover of the main asset of the Yukos oil giant, saying the first post-Soviet renationalization was to ensure the national interests. “Today the state, using absolutely legal market mechanisms, is protecting its interests. I consider that absolutely normal”, Putin told an annual press conference in the Kremlin, referring to the acquisition by state petroleum company Rosneft of Yukos’ core oil-pumping subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz. On December 23, Rosneft became the new owner of Yuganskneftegaz after buying the mystery firm that had won a secretive auction for the massive Siberian concern, owner of 17 percent...

MOSCOW, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has stripped adviser Andrei Illarionov of a key role after the maverick economist lambasted the state's legal assault on oil giant YUKOS . Illarionov is famously outspoken, but his comments on the state-imposed sale of a key YUKOS asset -- which he called "the scam of the year" -- were strong even by his standards. Putin has said the sale of YUKOS unit Yuganskneftegaz, which was bought for $9.4 billion by state oil firm Rosneft, had been a legitimate business deal. A Kremlin statement released late on Monday appointed Igor Shuvalov...

As Ukraine celebrates, Russia sinks further into darkness and despair. Millions of people spoke in Ukraine, and their voices were heard. In a rerun of the presidential election ordered by Ukraine’s Supreme Court, Viktor Yushchenko won a convincing victory, although his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, has so far refused to concede. Boisterous, yes, and still far from certain, but hopeful. In Russia, though, one of the few people willing to speak freely is already in jail. He’s Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of the oil group Yukos, and in a letter published Tuesday in the business daily Vedomosti he denounced...

The Russian government says it, rather than gas monopolist Gazprom or auction winner Rosneft, will take control of Yuganskneftegaz, the main oil subsidiary of Yukos, and that China's CNPC may subsequently take a one-fifth stake. The move, taken in response to legal challenges abroad by Yukos shareholders, underlines the lack of strategic planning over Yukos. With the government improvising as it goes along, another plan for Yuganskneftegaz may yet emerge. Yet given the legal liability surrounding the oil company, state ownership may be the only viable solution. In the space of two weeks in December, the prime beneficiary of the...

MOSCOW (AFP) - A top economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) slammed the government's takeover of the main asset of the Yukos oil giant as the "swindle of the year" and warned of growing state interventionism. In an unprecendented criticism of the destruction of Russia's top oil company by someone within the government, Andrei Illarionov accused the Putin administration of using "the money of Russian citizens" to strip Yukos of its core asset. "This year in the category of swindle of the year, the winner is the sale of Yuganskneftegaz to a mystery company (...)...

MOSCOW – In his harshest criticism of the Kremlin to date, jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky accused the Russian government of stealing his Yukos oil empire and warned in a letter published Tuesday that an ongoing crackdown on post-Soviet freedoms will ruin the country. Writing from prison, where he has been for more than 14 months, Khodorkovsky said the sale of Yukos' main production unit into state hands this month "was the most senseless and destructive event in the economic sphere since President Vladimir Putin has taken helm." "Using selective justice, introducing new legal norms and applying them retroactively," the state...

December 27, 2004 -- AFTER so much promise, a political winter has de scended upon Mother Rus sia. Last week's murky, forced sell-off of parts of Russia's $40 billion oil giant, Yukos, at the bargain basement price of $9.4 billion is just the latest proof. After all, Russia's slide into the darkness of soft authoritarianism already included President Vladimir Putin's media crackdown, political power grabs, international meddling and free enterprise rollbacks. The situation has regressed so far that freedom monitors have dubbed Russia politically "not free" (Freedom House), and economically "mostly unfree" (The Heritage Foundation) in their annual rankings.

The White House deserves kudos for protesting Russian President Vladimir Putin's sale of the main production unit of the oil giant Yukos to a company that no one had ever heard of before. Sure, the rebuke came a full day after President Bush passed up a chance to publicly criticize his good friend, Mr. Putin, for the Kremlin's clumsy efforts to smother Yukos and other private enterprises in Russia, but at least it happened. The tale is just about as sorry a story as business enterprise can get in Russia, and it keeps getting weirder. Mr. Putin, bent on destroying...

Thu Dec 23,12:15 PM ET Igor Sechin, former deputy chief of staff for President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), is seen during a parade marking the Victory Day on Red Square in Moscow, in this May 9, 2004 file photo. Igor Sechin now is chairman of the board of Rosneft oil company which bought a little- known company, BaikalFinansGroup, that just days earlier had purchased Yukos' most important production unit, Yuganskneftegaz. (AP Photo/Konstantin Zavrazhin, Rossiiskaya Gazeta)

After four months in captivity, two French journalists were finally let go on Tuesday. But why? Also, a new survey shows that the British like to booze over the holidays, and yet another scandal hits Germany's beleaguered opposition party. French Journalists Freed A pair of French journalists held hostage in Iraq since August 20 were finally freed by their captors on Tuesday and are scheduled to arrive back home in France on Wednesday afternoon. Christian Chesnot of Radio France International and Georges Malbrunot of the daily Le Figaro spent four months in the hands of a group calling itself the...