8
Yuganskneftegaz would be sold off to pay some of Yukos’s tax debts (Ayton 7/20/04; Ostrovsky 7/22/04).
7
The decision seemed less like frustrated reaction to Khodorkovskii’s defiance than an attempt to prevent
Yukos from paying off its taxes and fines any other way.
In addition to the incessant attempts to force Yukos to sell Yugansk, the state also appeared to reassess
the status of several other important economic groups at the time. While Yukos was the largest and most
famous company to face renewed tax investigations in 2003 and 2004, it was hardly the only one. In July
2003, for example, soon after arresting Lebedev, prosecutors reopened an investigation into Oleg
Deripaska’s acquisition of several properties, including Avtobank and the Nosta steel plant (Bloomberg
7/16/03). They had closed the investigation in June for lack of evidence, but it was re-opened because, in
the words of a spokesperson, the original investigation had been conducted in a “non-objective way”
(Ostrovsky 7/16/03). Similarly, the government launched a tax investigation into Sibneft in November
2003, and in March of the following year it announced the company owed $1 billion in back taxes (Munter
11/19/03; Baker 3/4/04). In yet another example, a tiny customer of telecommunications giant
Vympel’com sued the company in late 2003, arguing that he did not have to pay his $800 phone bill
because Vympel’com did not actually hold the license for the cellular frequencies it used. Lending
credence to charges that the customer was a front for a rival company founded by Putin’s
telecommunications minister, the government agreed with the customer in January 2004, essentially ruling
that Vympel’com could not bill its subscribers (S. Ostrovsky 2/6/04; Fraser 3/10/04). Later in the year, it
also denied Vympel’com an expected increase in the number of phone numbers available for new
customers (Bloomberg 7/13/04). Each of those conflicts developed along different paths, and they each
produced a wide range of speculation about causes and implications, but they clearly demonstrated that
pieces of the federal government were reasserting themselves as major and aggressive arbiters in disputes
over property.
Even more ominous for those who concerned about an increasing state role in property redistribution,
the Russian Audit Chamber issued a report on privatization 1993-2003 in late 2004, claiming that the
6
Despite obstacles, Yukos had paid about $2.6 billion in back taxes and fines by early October (Nicholson
10/6/04).
7
The sale would actually be of a 76.8% stake in Yugansk, which would represent 100% of the voting
rights, since the remaining 23.2% of the company was divided among 13 preferred shares (Faulconbridge et
al. 10/15/04).
Convention