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Moscow starts auction ofbankrupt Yukos' assets

The bankrupt Yukos empire built by imprisoned oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky was to be dismantled in a series of auctions of assets valued at US$22 billion starting yesterday.

The first on the list was a 9.44 percent stake in Rosneft, with a starting price of US$7.4 billion and was to take place at Yukos headquarters in Moscow.

Yukos was once Russia's largest oil producer and Khodorkovsky, who acquired the company during a time of shady privatization deals in the early 1990s, was feted in the West as a model capitalist.

The ambitious entrepreneur quickly rose to become Russia's wealthiest man.

Starting in 2003, however, fraud inquiries seen by critics as steered by the Kremlin and aimed against the increasingly politically minded Khodorkovsky, bankrupted his oil group and landed him with an eight-year prison sentence.

State-controlled Rosneft, now the second-largest oil producer after Lukoil, swooped in 2004 to buy up Yukos' main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, for billions of dollars less than the unit's assessed value.

Rosneft is poised to take the lion's share of the Yukos assets to be sold off this year and recently took out a loan of US$22 billion for the purpose, analysts said.

Rosneft itself and TNK-BP, the British-Russian energy major, had declared their interest in bidding for the Rosneft stake. Russia's federal property fund, which is arranging the auctions, has declined to say if there are other interested buyers. But analysts said that TNK-BP was only participating to ensure the auction goes ahead as it would be canceled if there was only one buyer.

Other lots announced so far for the auctions, which are to be completed by August, include stakes in power companies, banks, security outfits and oil firms.

The sale of other Yukos assets could herald more bidders and more surprises, with the likely involvement of foreign energy groups such as US oil major Chevron and a consortium of Italian energy groups ENI and Enel.

A court-appointed bankruptcy administrator, Eduard Rebgun, earlier said remaining assets were worth US$22 billion. But Yukos management and independent analysts say the real value was up to US$40 billion.

The asset sales are intended to compensate 68 creditors for debts incurred by Yukos in the course of the investigations, which have been estimated at US$27.5 billion.
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