This way the court reduced the amount of tax claims from 40.6 billion rubles to 39.113 billion rubles.
An appeal may be lodged by YUKOS within 30 days.
YUKOS' lawyers believe that the company should appeal against the court decision.
"We will recommend our client to appeal against today's court decision in the appeals instance", one of the lawyers representing YUKOS' interests told reporters following the court session.
On September 2, 2004 the Taxation Ministry added 119.9 billion rubles to YUKOS' back-taxes for 2001. Out of this amount, 50.7 billion rubles of the principal debt and 28.7 billion rubles of accrued surcharge will be debited by the taxation authorities without further authorization.
The punitive tax in the amount of 40.6 billion rubles in compliance with the applicable taxation law should have been charged through the Arbitration Court.
At today's session the Moscow Arbitration Court dismissed YUKOS' lawyers' request on recusation of the judge hearing the case on the punitive tax.
"The defendant has doubts about the impartiality of the judge", stated one of the company's representatives.
The recusation request was dismissed by deputy chairman of the Moscow Arbitration Court Nikolai Logunov.
Besides, at the session on Monday the court dismissed three YUKOS' appeals: to call additional evidence, to consider some of the Taxation Ministry's arguments separately and to postpone hearing of the case.
