Board-Ansicht
Mix-Ansicht- Interfax: 53 Prozent der Yukos-Aktien beschlagnahmt - Das_Orakel_aus_Oberlahnstein, 30.10.2003, 17:14
- Russia freezes Yukos shares (BBC-Artikel dazu) - RK, 30.10.2003, 17:51
- ja geil und die lagen alle auf den Cayman Islands ;-) - EM-financial, 30.10.2003, 18:35
Russia freezes Yukos shares (BBC-Artikel dazu)
-->Russia freezes Yukos shares
Russian authorities have frozen shares that amount to a controlling interest in national oil giant Yukos, the company has said.
The action comes days after the authorities stepped up investigations into the firm by arresting chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky on fraud and tax evasion charges.
A controlling stake has been seized, although the shares still retain voting and dividend rights, Reuters quoted a Yukos spokesman as saying.
A Yukos spokesperson confirmed to BBC News Online that the share freeze had taken place but declined to give details.
A fair and open court hearing will find the arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky illegal and all accusations against him groundless
Yukos board of directors
Prosecutors are thought to have taken effective control of the Yukos stake owned by Menatep, the financial vehicle run by Mr Khodorkovsky and key allies, many of whom are now in prison or facing investigation.
The Menatep partners cannot now sell or undertake other transactions with the shares.
Yukos said the stake amounted to 44% of the company, not the 61% it had earlier said.
Stock market fall
Earlier on Thursday, Yukos announced plans for a dividend of $2bn, one of the largest shareholder payouts in Russian corporate history.
Mr Khodorkovsky, who owns 36.6% of Yukos, should receive about $730m.
But the likely bonanza for shareholders did not prevent Yukos shares dropping a further 12% on Thursday as investors fretted about the company's future.
Russia's RTS stock market index was down 8.14% while the rouble fell by 10 kopecks against the dollar.
Both the RTS and MICEX indexes are down more than 20% on the week.
Yukos directors issued a statement standing firmly behind Mr Khodorkovsky.
"The board... declares its full support and belief in the management of the company and states its certainty that a fair and open court hearing will find the arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky illegal and all accusations against him groundless," the statement says.
Political
The case against Mr Khodorkovsky, one of Russia's richest and most powerful individuals, is widely seen as political and Mr Putin faces questions from anxious businessmen about the Kremlin's attitude to Russia's rising class of the independently wealthy.
The stamp of state control over shares in the country's biggest oil company would be an intervention unprecedented since Soviet days.
It is likely to stoke fears that power politics is gaining the upper hand over economic reform in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December.
Mr Khodorkovsky has funded political parties critical of Mr Putin.
Mr Putin has been well regarded by investors as a source of stability and guarantor of economic reform, but Yukos is seen as a flagship moderniser among Russian corporations.
In his only public comments on the arrest the Russian president has insisted that the case against Yukos is a judicial matter and part of a general fight against corruption.
Murky
Mr Khodorkovsky, through Menatep, was a leading figure among the young business elite - the so-called"oligarchs" - which gained power and influence through murky privatisations in the 1990s.
The prospect of a widescale purge of that generation would leave few of Russia's new millionaires untouched.
That campaign was stepped up on Wednesday when prosecutors sought to lift immunity protecting Vasily Shakhnovsky, a major Yukos shareholder who was recently elected to Russia's upper house of parliament.
Platon Lebedev, a Menatep partner and major Yukos shareholder has been under arrest since July.
In a sign of widening political repercussions from the battle, reports on Wednesday said Alexander Voloshin, Mr Putin's chief of staff, had resigned.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/3227447.stm
Published: 2003/10/30 16:43:44 GMT
Thread gesperrtgesamter Thread:
