MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti) - The Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Wednesday that Volgotanker, an oil shipping subsidiary of bankrupt oil company Yukos, be put under external management.
Tax authorities say Volgotanker, which owns Russia's largest fleet of river tankers, owes 3.3 billion rubles ($130 million) in unpaid taxes for 2001-2004. The debt exceeds the value of the company's net assets.
The Federal Tax Service has applied for Volgotanker to be declared bankrupt, and all the company's vessels have been seized as security for the tax bill.
Parent company Yukos, once Russia's largest oil company, was declared bankrupt on August 1, 2006, after three years of litigation with tax authorities over arrears. Its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is serving an eight-year prison sentence in Siberia for fraud and tax evasion.
Through a series of liquidation auctions, Yukos has repaid around 400 billion rubles ($16 billion) to creditors. The company's key production and refining assets have been bought up by Rosneft at or following auctions, making the state-controlled company one of the country's leading crude producers. Earlier Tuesday, Rosneft won an auction to buy Yukos's transport and CIS-based assets, bidding at $730 million.
Eduard Rebgun, the Yukos bankruptcy administrator, earlier said Yukos was short of more than $2 billion required to meet all creditors' claims.
