Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky suggested company's board of directors to use shares owned by him and other key shareholders to pay back the government's multi-billion US dollar tax claims, his lawyer Anton Drel said Wednesday.

"My client, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has suggested that the oil company's board of directors uses the block of shares owned by the company's major shareholders to settle the government's tax claims," Drel said in a statement, according to Interfax news agency.

Drel said that Khodorkovsky had also asked the board of directors not to declare the company bankrupt.

Khodorkovsky urged Yukos to conduct all negotiations on settling the government's tax claims, Drel noted.

Yukos, Russia's largest oil producer and exporter, is ordered to pay 99.4 billion rubles (3.4 billion US dollars) in back taxes for the year of 2000.

It has said that paying the tax demand would force it into bankruptcy as the company's assets have been frozen by an earlier court ruling and it would thus be unable to raise enough cash in time to pay the taxes.

Yukos's troubles increased Monday when the Russian Tax Service delivered a new back taxes bill of 98 billion rubles (3.3 billion dollars) for 2001.

Russian Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov told Ekho Moskvy radio on Tuesday that more back taxes claims were likely to followfor 2002 and 2003. The new claims are likely to be validated by the courts.

Drel's statement came only hours after court bailiffs began to execute a court order requiring the embattled oil giant to pay 99.4 billion rubles (3.4 billion US dollars) in back taxes for 2000.

"The debtor was given a five-day deadline for voluntary execution, after which the Moscow Court Bailiffs Service began to enforce the court decision," Interfax quoted a statement of the justice ministry as saying.

Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man with a fortune of 15.2 billion US dollars as calculated by Forbes magazine, has been detained since last October on charges of fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion.

His arrest and the arrest of another Yukos core shareholder Platon Lebedev last July is seen by some analysts as the start of the nearly year-long politically motivated judicial campaign to stifle the financial and political clout of Khodorkovsky who had reportedly sponsored political opponents against Russian PresidentVladimir Putin.

But Putin has repeatedly denied any political motive behind theYukos case, saying it is part of the country's anti-corruption campaign to crack down on economic crimes.

Last month, Putin said that Russian government is not interested in Yukos bankruptcy.

Source: Xinhua