"After Svetlana Bakhmina's arrest there is no doubt that the Prosecutor General's Office has begun an all-out persecution campaign against Yukos directors, managers and regular employees," Yukos's statement said. "The company has every reason to assert that what the Prosecutor General's Office is doing to Yukos employees is blatant terror, similar to the form and methods under Stalin in 1937."
Ms. Bakhmina was arrested under the suspicion of embezzling $8 billion rubles from Tomskneft and East Petroleum Company, the prosecutor's spokesman said.
In the statement, Yukos said two other members of the legal department, Dmitry Gololobov and Kirill Glukhovskoi, were also suspected of embezzlement.
On November 18, the Prosecutor General's Office reported that Mr. Gololobov, the head of the Yukos legal department, was placed on an international wanted list and that a warrant was issued for his arrest.
He is suspected of misappropriating a 3 billion ruble ($100 million) block of East Petroleum Company shares.
Mr. Gololobov is currently outside Russia, and investigators are certain he fled prosecution.
Mr. Glukhovskoi, Mr. Gololobov's deputy, manages Yukos's defense in the arbitration court. He was placed on the wanted list last week and his and his relatives' homes were searched.
