BRUSSELS (Sputnik) – Russia’s oil company LUKoil wants the European Commission’s help in tackling allegations of money laundering and tax evasion at its refinery in Romania, LUKoil vice-president for oil refining said Wednesday.
Prosecutors in the city of Ploesti said last week that they had seized fixed assets belonging to LUKoil’s Romanian subsidiary as part of an ongoing investigation into money laundering and tax evasion.
"We would like to see European involvement in this because we have a small, relatively minor court making huge decisions that impact not only Romanian assets, but now European assets," Thomas Mueller told reporters.
The frozen assets, belonging to Petrotel-Lukoil in Ploesti and the Netherlands-based Lukoil Europe Holdings that is Petrotel’s majority stakeholder, are valued from $657 million to $2.4 billion.
A source close to the matter later confirmed to RIA Novosti that Sefcovic had received Alekperov’s letter and is reviewing it, but declined to elaborate further.
LUKoil’s vice-president warned that European assets, worth nearly $10 billion, are on the line if the Petrotel refinery in Ploesti shuts down. Romanian authorities have temporarily closed down the refinery in the past, including a raid conducted last October, on similar suspicions of wrongdoing.
Petrotel, Romania’s largest and one of the largest oil refineries in Eastern Europe, has been in operation under LUKoil management since 1998.
