Search for mystery buyer of Yukos jewel

The search continued today for the new mystery owner of the core production asset of Russia's Yukos oil company but most observers took the view that state-run gas giant Gazprom ultimately stood behind the unknown entity.

In an auction cloaked in secrecy yesterday, the Russian government broke up Yukos, the country's largest oil producer, selling its Siberian crown jewel, Yuganskneftegaz, to Baikalfinansgroup for $9.35 billion.

'Gazprom used a front to buy Yuganskneftegaz,' Russia's Izvestia daily splashed across its front page. 'By hiding behind a completely unknown company, Gazprom is seeking to protect itself from US justice,' the newspaper said.

Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer, had been seen as the favourite to win the auction, fulfilling a Kremlin ambition to restore state control over vital oil resources.

But a US court order obtained by Yukos in Texas last week, barring Gazprom from participating in the sale, had raised the threat of damaging US legal action and the gas monopoly at the last minute withdrew from the bidding.

Baikal, a firm with no telephone and an address in Tver, north-west of Moscow, was only registered as a company on December 15, the Vremya Novostei daily reported.

The sale, which took place in the best traditions of the murky Russian 1990s privatizations, may have been won by Kremlin-friendly private oil firm Surgutneftegaz, with the aim of later reselling Yugansk to Gazprom, reports said.

The disposal represents a death blow for Yukos, whose ambitious billionaire founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky had built it into Russia's most Western-like company before he was arrested in October 2003 to face trial on fraud and tax evasion charges.

Yugansk pumps a million barrels a day, some 60% of Yukos' oil, and accounts for more than 70% of reserves of Russia's biggest oil producer.

Yukos has vowed to sue any new owner of Yugansk and lawyers for its main shareholders said today that they would take legal action in the US and Western Europe once the identity of the ultimate buyer was clear.