MOSCOW, July 12 (RIA Novosti) - East Siberian deposits of the bankrupt oil company Yukos [RTS: YUKO] were auctioned off Thursday to state-controlled crude producer Rosneft [RTS: ROSN] for 5.847 billion rubles ($229 million).
The starting price of the lot was 5.732 billion rubles ($224 million). The second bidder in the auction held July 12 was a little known company, Benefit.
Yukos, once Russia's largest oil company, was declared bankrupt August 1, 2006, after three years of litigation with tax authorities over tax arrears. Its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is serving an eight-year prison sentence in Siberia for fraud and tax evasion.
Yukos will pay about 300 billion rubles (about $11.8 billion) to third-tier creditors, the press secretary for the company's bankruptcy administrator said.
"We have already transferred 400 billion rubles (about $15.7 billion) as principal debt payment to creditors. Now we have to transfer about 300 billion rubles in penalty payments to third-tier creditors, largely to the Federal Tax Service. Yukos has 63 such creditors," Nikolai Lashkevich said.
At the same time, Lashkevich declined to specify the date of money transfer.
Overall, the Yukos register of creditors' claims includes 137 claims from 63 creditors totaling 709.512 billion rubles (about $27 billion).
