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Octopus news...
Head of Russia's Yukos Oil Company Arrested
By Deborah Seward MOSCOW -- Camouflaged special forces arrested the head of Russia's largest
oil producer, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at a Siberian airport on Saturday, and he
was ordered jailed on charges of tax evasion and fraud. The dramatic arrest alarmed the country's business and political elite, with
many analysts saying the actions against the oil company, Yukos, are a
Kremlin-directed campaign to keep him out of politics. For months, Russian prosecutors have been investigating officials at Yukos
and its shareholders, looking for evidence of tax evasion and theft of state
property. Special forces dressed in camouflage and black uniforms detained Khodorkovsky
at an airport in Siberia and investigators forced him to return to Moscow for
questioning, a Yukos press spokesman said. Hours later, the the Interfax news agency reported that the tycoon had been
charged and ordered jailed. "The head of Yukos is incriminated on committing a series of crimes,
including theft by fraud on a large scale, the failure to pay taxes as an
organization and as an individual," a representative of the prosecutor's office
said, according to Interfax. In addition, Khodorkovsky was charged with failure to abide by a court
decision, fraud, forgery and embezzlement, Interfax said. A spokesman of the
Prosecutor General's office told The Associated Press that charges had been
filed, but could not specify what they were. As pressure intensified against Yukos in the probe that began this summer,
Khodorkovsky vowed that he would not be driven out of Russia like the tycoons
Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who also allege the Kremlin targeted
their companies for political reasons. Businessmen fear that the probe will chill foreign investors' recent
enthusiasm for Russia and impede the country's economic recovery. Alexander Shadrin, press spokesman for Yukos, told The Associated Press that
after Khodorkovsky's plane landed in Novosibirsk it was surrounded by trucks.
Special forces in black uniform boarded the plane, shouting "FSB, put your
weapons down or we'll shoot." The FSB is the acronym for the Federal Security
Service, a successor of the Soviet-era KGB. A representative of the security
forces then told Khodorkovsky to accompany them and he agreed. "They used sort of special forces as if they were dealing with a terrorist,"
Shadrin said. Khodorkovsky is one of the most prominent of the so-called Russian
"oligarchs," men who made huge fortunes in a very short time after the collapse
of the Soviet Union by acquiring state property at low prices. The oligarchs are
greatly resented by large numbers of Russians who did not benefit from the
privatization of state property. Both parliamentary and presidential elections will be held in the coming
months, and the standing of pro-Kremlin parties among ordinary Russians has been
strengthened by the pressure being put on oligarchs by the authorities. Russian business executives and leaders across the political spectrum
expressed concern about Khodorkovsky's detention. "The Russian business community believes that the legal system and its
leaders have drastically worsened the situation. They have undermined the trust
(of society) in business and the law enforcement bodies themselves," Anatoly
Chubais, who oversaw the privatization of state assets in the 1990s," was quoted
by Interfax as saying. Earlier this week, Russian prosecutors searched a company looking for
evidence in connection with the criminal probe into Yukos. The Prosecutor General's Office said the company, Strategic Communications
Agency, holds computer databases for companies controlled by the Russian oil
giant. Yukos denied that it had any connection to the company. A statement read by telephone to The Associated Press by the press service of
the prosecutor's office said that Khodorkovsky had been summoned for questioning
Friday in "the framework of investigation of a criminal case concerning theft
and tax evasion by structures controlled by Yukos." The statement said that
Khodorkovsky "deliberately ignored the summons" and that investigators decided
he should be "forced to appear." Shadrin told The AP that Yukos had received a summons, but that the company
had replied in written form that Khodorkovsky was on a business trip and would
be unable to appear. "This is a sheer lie," Shadrin said, referring to the
prosecutor's statement. The investigation began in July with the arrest of Platon Lebedev, a top
Yukos shareholder and board chairman of Menatep Group, on charges of theft of
state property during the 1994 privatization of a fertilizer plant. Lebedev has
remained in jail awaiting trial. Last week, prosecutors also filed tax evasion
charges against a Yukos manager, Vasily Shakhnovsky, who oversees day-to-day
company operations and is responsible for customer relations and auditing. Prosecutors have also carried out searches of Yukos-owned companies and the
homes of Yukos shareholders. Yukos recently completed its merger with its smaller rival Sibneft to create
one of the world's top oil producers, and will formally become the new entity
after a November shareholder meeting.
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