Russian police probe Yukos taxes

The plain clothes officers who searched the headquarters of the Russian oil giant Yukos, beleaguered by a 99.4bn-ruble (€2.6bn) back taxes claim, were looking for evidence of tax-evasion by a Yukos subsidiary, a company spokesman said today.

The officers spent several hours at the headquarters yesterday, removing hard disks from the computers of Yukos’ top managers and some board members, spokesman Alexander Shadrin said.

“The search was conducted in connection with a criminal case against our subsidiary Samaraneftegaz that is suspected to tax-dodging,” Shadrin said. Samaraneftegaz is Yukos’ third-largest operating unit.

The search came a day after a Moscow court refused to unfreeze the company’s assets, making it impossible for the company to sell property in order to pay the back taxes bill and avoid insolvency.

The Prosecutor General’s office had said that yesterday’s actions were connected to a criminal fraud and tax evasion case “against structures controlled by Yukos”, Russian news agencies said.

The reports said the matter was separate from the fraud and tax evasion cases pending against Yukos ex-CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a close associate, Platon Lebedev.

Yukos, Russia’s biggest oil producer with output at about 1.72 million barrels a day, has warned that it faces bankruptcy if it cannot sell assets to pay the tax bill and if it is not allowed to stagger the payments.

No Yukos officials were in the building during Saturday’s search.