MOSCOW (AFP) - The battered Russian oil giant Yukos said that a Moscow court had frozen its 34.5 percent stake in rival Sibneft, halting a reversal of their merger that would provide cash for Yukos to settle massive tax bills.
A Yukos official told AFP the court ruling took effect a week ago, but declined to comment further.
Sibneft, controlled by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich who owns the Chelsea football club, is in the process of unwinding a merger with Yukos that was agreed before authorities launched an aggressive campaign against Russia`s top oil producer last year.
Mainly based in London, Abramovich is believed to have kept on reasonable terms with the Kremlin, unlike Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has been in jail for more than a year as he faces trial on seven counts of fraud and tax evasion.
But the November 3 ruling by the Moscow Basmanny court means Yukos cannot return the shares to Sibneft, and could open the way for their appropriation if it can be proved they were acquired with illegal funds, the Russian business daily Vedomosti said.
Vedomosti quoted a prosecution official as saying the decision to freeze Yukos` stake in Sibneft was linked to a criminal case for tax evasion against the head of Yukos` accounting unit.
"It is possible that the prosecutors` actions have been inspired by influential enemies of Roman Abramovich or other principal Sibneft shareholders," the United Financial Group brokerage in Moscow said.
"Another, and perhaps more likely, interpretation of this action is that it is simply designed to ensure the destruction of Yukos," it added in a research note.
Yukos, which faces tax bills of 7.5 billion dollars for 2000 and 2001, in addition to more than 10 billion dollars in other claims, stands to get back three billion dollars in cash that it paid for 20 percent of Sibneft`s shares.
This could enable it to pay off the immediate tax bill -- already partly settled -- and complicate plans by the state to sell off Yukos` crown jewel, Yuganskneftegaz, in settlement of the back taxes, analysts say.
The speculation is that the Kremlin`s intention is to hand over the lion`s share of the country`s top oil corporation to state-controlled gas behemoth Gazprom, and create a new national oil and gas giant.
Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Yukos who faces more than 20 years in jail if convicted according to his lawyers, is widely seen to have been targetted because of his political ambitions.
The latest bad news sent Yukos shares plunging 4.76 percent to three dollars on the benchmark RTS index. Sibneft stock also fell by 5.11 percent to 3.53 dollars.
This wiped out nearly all the gains in Yukos stock a day earlier after the company`s chairman Viktor Gerashchenko said that Khodorkovsky and the other core shareholders were ready to sell their stakes, raising investors` hopes of a negotiated outcome.
Yukos has warned it may be forced to declare bankruptcy before or during an extraordinary shareholders` meeting on December 20.
Sibneft downplayed the share freeze, saying that a court in the Russian far eastern region of Chukotka had ordered the return of 14.5 percent of Sibneft shares and the recovery of the other remaining 20 percent was a matter of time.
"We have a court ruling in place by which our shareholders should get back 14.5 percent. As for the remaining shares, that`s the final step in the process," Sibneft spokesman John Mann told AFP.
11/10/2004 - 18:02 GMT - AFP