Russian press reports say oil company Surgutneftegaz is the mystery purchaser of the main assets of Russia's Yukos empire, which was auctioned for $9.35 billion to a shell company at the weekend.
The daily newspaper Gazeta said the company might later sell all or part of the Yukos assets on to Gazprom, the state-controlled gas giant that has been widely rumoured as the intended final purchaser of the oil interests.
Other analysts have already named Surgutneftegaz as the possible buyer of Yukos's Siberian oil-pumping subsidiary Yuganskneftegaz, which was put on the block to pay off a massive tax bill claimed by the Russian government.
Gazeta and the business daily Vedomosti said that two people who represented the obscure Baikalfinansgroup company, which bid successfully for the assets at Sunday's auction, worked for Surgutneftegaz.
Baikalfinansgroup was registered in Tver, a city northwest of Moscow, only on December 6, Gazeta wrote.
Vedomosti quoted a source close to the Russian government as saying the secretive purchase was a scheme thought up 'by Gazprom' to allow it to buy the main Yukos production arm indirectly.
Yukos warned yesterday that it would sue and seek damages against any parties to the forced weekend auction of Yuganskneftegaz, which pumped 60% of Yukos oil and accounts for 17% of Russia's entire oil reserves.
Yukos said in a statement from Houston, Texas, that Yuganskneftegaz remained its property under its US Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in a Houston court, and it criticised the forced auction process. The auction was also criticised by the US government.
Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, behind bars since October 2003, built the group into Russia's most Western-like company before he was arrested at gunpoint on his corporate jet on a Siberian airfield to face trial on fraud and tax evasion charges.
