Yukos given a month to pay tax bill

Russia expects beleaguered oil giant Yukos to pay its crushing back taxes bill within a month, a Justice Ministry official said today in an apparent indication that the company’s feared collapse is not imminent.

Yukos’ tax troubles – it owes £2bn (€3bn) for the year 2000 alone – alarmed world oil markets this week as the company warned it could be forced to halt production and exports in early August.

The company says the bill could drive it into bankruptcy and many analysts suspect the government aims to dismantle the company and sell the pieces into Kremlin-friendly hands.

But Andrei Belyakov, head of the Russian bailiffs’ service, said Yukos has paid 20% of the debt and “the remaining part must be paid off within the period of a month.”

Belyakov said after meeting Yukos vice president Frank Rieger that the company had expressed the desire to pay the remainder as soon as possible. But assets that Yukos could sell to raise money are frozen under a court order and it was unclear how the company could pay the sum.

Yukos has said it does not have enough ready cash to meet the bill.

Despite the uncertainties, the statement gave a sharp boost to Yukos’ stock after a series of precipitous falls earlier in the week, with shares up 10% by mid-afternoon on Moscow’s RTS exchange.

“The bailiffs’ comments have given people the feeling that there’s no urgency,” said Nick Mokhoff, a trader at the Brunswick UBS brokerage in Moscow.

Yukos produces about 2% of the world’s oil and concerns about an imminent supply disruption drove oil prices to an all-time high in trading in the United States earlier in the week.

The company has repeatedly sought to talk the government into allowing it to pay its debt over a period of several years, but the government has not responded publicly to the proposals.

Many analysts say the government’s unyielding stance indicates that its goal is to sell off pieces of the company to Kremlin-compliant enterprises.

Former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky – Russia’s richest man – had funded opposition parties and the legal actions against Yukos are widely seen as a Kremlin-led drive to punish him for his political positions.

Khodorkovsky has been jailed since October on charges of forgery, fraud and tax evasion.