Putin says Russia not interested in bankrupting Yukos

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia is not interested in bankrupting the oil giant Yukos.

"The Russian administration, government and economic authorities are not interested in bankrupting a company like Yukos," Putin was quoted by Russian agencies as saying in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.

Yukos now faces a claim for 3.4 billion US dollars in back taxes. The embattled oil company has warned that the back taxes demand from the tax authorities could drive it into bankruptcy this year.

Putin, who was in Tashkent to attend the summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), said that the issue of Yukos's debts is a legal issue and the judicial authorities are currently calculating these debts.

"The government will try to ensure that this company does not go bankrupt," he said, adding that the prospects of Yukos's bankruptcy is "a very sensitive issue."

Yukos shares, which had dropped sharply in recent days, soared by more than 15 percent after Putin's remarks, and trading was halted with their price up 34 percent.

The Interfax news agency reported Wednesday that managers of Yukos have offered to present the government with a plan under which a portion of its assets would be sold to state-controlled oil companies and a controlling stake would be bought from the core shareholders and turned over to government-approved investors.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chief executive of Yukos and Russia's richest man with a fortune of 15.2 billion dollars as calculated by Forbes magazine, was detained last October following the arrest of another key Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev last July.

Both face seven charges including fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion in connection with the 1994 privatization of a big, state-owned fertilizer plant and could end up with about 10 years in prison if convicted.

The months-long judicial campaign against Yukos is seen as a political move to stifle the financial and political clout of Khodorkovsky, who had reportedly sponsored political opponents against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But Putin, who was reelected to another four-year term in March, has repeatedly denied any political motive behind the Yukos case, saying it is part of the country's anti-corruption campaign to crack down on economic crimes.

Source: Xinhua