The bankrupt oil company, once Russia's number one crude producer, still has assets worth $22 billion that are to be sold off in auctions through the liquidation process, but total claims from creditors against the company total around $26 billion.
The court hearings on Yuganskneftegaz, bought two years ago by state-controlled Rosneft at what analysts considered a knock-down price, were postponed on the plaintiff's request to study materials submitted by the defendants in the case.
A 76.79% stake in Yuganskneftegaz was sold by the Federal Property Management Fund on December 19, 2004, in lieu of Yukos' tax arrears for 2000 and 2001. Several days later, Rosneft bought the asset from an unknown company, Baikal Finance Group, which won the auction. The group was widely believed to be a vehicle set up to enable Rosneft to cheaply acquire the stake.
Yukos first challenged the auction in May 2005. The company claimed the sale of Yuganskneftegaz was conducted in violation of Russian and international law. Yukos lawyers also claimed the Federal Property Management Fund had deliberately underestimated the initial value of the asset.
The defendants in the case are the Federal Property Management Fund, the Russian Finance Ministry and a number of companies that participated in the auction. Yukos hopes to collect 388.3 billion rubles ($14.5 billion) in losses from the defendants, which the battered company claims to have sustained after the sale of its core production unit.
Yukos was declared bankrupt on August 1, 2006 after three years of litigation with authorities over the tax arrears. The oil company, whose anti-Kremlin founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison term for fraud and tax evasion, now faces huge claims from Yuganskneftegaz, the Federal Tax Service, Rosneft and more than 20 other companies.
