Yukos Receives Another Back Tax Bill

by Tatiana Smolenskaya, Tax-News.com, Moscow

29 November 2006

Bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos has reportedly been hit with yet another bill for back taxes, this time totalling about US$840 million.

The Itar-Tass news agency reported that the Moscow Arbitration Court on Sunday upheld a claim by the Federal Tax Service for an additional 21.9 billion rubles in tax from the company, once Russia's largest oil firm.

The Arbitration Court has also been considering yet more claims from Yukos's creditors worth some 200 billion rubles (US$7.45 billion). These creditors include Yukos Capital SARL, Glendale Group (BVI), the Federal Bailiff Service, and the Trust Investment Bank. The company's largest creditors remain the Federal Tax Service and state-owned oil giant Rosneft.

Yukos was driven into the ground by a series of - some say politically-motivated - multi-billion dollar claims for back taxes, which eventually totalled about $28 billion.

Indeed, reports circulating in the world's media have suggested that the recently assassinated Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko had shortly before his mysterious death in London delivered a dossier detailing the government's involvement in the company's break-up to former Yukos second-in-command, Leonid Nevzlin, who is currently in exile in Israel.

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