Baikal Finance Group, an unknown company, won an auction for Russian oil company's YUKOS's core asset Sunday with a $9.4 billion bid and analysts said whomever was behind the bid enjoyed Kremlin favor. Gazprom, which had been favored to win but was outbid, declared it had no links to Baikal. Analysts still believed the state-controlled gas giant or other state interests may have had a hand in the winning bid for Yuganskneftegaz. YUKOS is widely seen by analysts as the victim of a Kremlin campaign to crush its politically ambitious owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and seize control of strategic sectors of the economy sold off in the chaotic privatizations of the 1990s. Khodorkovsky is now on trial for fraud and tax evasion and faces 10 years in jail if convicted.
Baikal, named after a huge Siberian freshwater lake in the heartland of Russia's oil industry, bid 260.75 billion rubles ($9.4 billion) for Yuganskneftegaz, said the sale's organizer, the Federal Property Fund. Under Russian law the government can order a new auction or seize Yugansk in lieu of unpaid taxes if Baikal fails to pay the full amount it has bid within 14 days. The sale of Yuganskneftegaz, which pumps more oil than OPEC member Qatar, went ahead despite a U.S. court order barring Gazprom and its foreign bankers from bidding, pending further proceedings in YUKOS's application for U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. |