Prosecutors raid Russian oil giant

Prosecutors began searching the archives at Russia’s biggest oil producer today in what appeared to be the latest legal manoeuvre against the oil giant.

The search at Yukos’ Moscow headquarters came as a senior business representative presented an appeal from the country’s top business leaders to President Vladimir Putin not to upset the Russia’s fragile stability.

Albert Mkrtuchev, a Yukos lawyer, said about 20 investigators from the prosecutor general’s office showed up without a search warrant and began searching through the archives. He said that after about 10 minutes, Yukos lawyers were permitted to be present during the search.

A spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, Natalya Vishnyakova, denied that investigators had shown up without a warrant.

The pursuit of Yukos has left foreign investors jittery about the stability of companies formed on the basis of the controversial privatisation deals of the 1990s.

Arkady Volsky, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said at a Kremlin meeting with Putin, senior MPs and regional leaders that he feared such investigations could lead to instability.

“We had a normal, stable situation, but actions upsetting the situation have begun,” Volsky said.

“I ask the law enforcement agencies not to make the situation explosive,” he said. He added that he did not want to interfere in the work of prosecutors, but questioned “why they first put someone in jail and then figure out what’s going on, and not vice versa.”

Last week, Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev was arrested in connection with accusations of fraud during the 1994 government sale of a fertiliser plant.

On Tuesday, the Prosecutor General’s Office opened an investigation into Yukos’ acquisition of a stake in Yeniseineftegaz, an energy firm with licenses to develop potentially lucrative oil fields in Siberia. On Wednesday, the prosecutors pledged to investigate llegations of tax evasion by Yukos.

Opposition politicians and analysts say the probes into Yukos are politically motivated and a warning to powerful Russian businessmen to keep out of politics.