A deal at a blatantly reduced price may provide ample reason for legal action if the buyer is proved to have been using ungrounded privileges, point out Yukos lawyers, said Mr. Misamore. As he explained, he meant a purchaser who would make use of the company plight, and so fail to pay a decent sum.
Yukos previously appealed to the federal Cabinet for further debates on how to avoid bankruptcy of Russia's largest oil company.
Yuganskneftegaz has Nefteyugansk in West Siberia's Khanty-Mansi autonomous area for its registered seat, and is a major Yukos affiliate. Its sale, announced as part of final process, will drastically cut Yukos revenues, said the appeal. Even if the mammoth gets out of its liquidity crisis, the sale of its principal extracting branch may force Yukos into bankruptcy, and it will no longer cope with available export contracts.
Yukos investors and stockholders will see a lightning sale of Yuganskneftegaz for a drastically reduced price as a blatant go at ruining the company. If the prospect comes true, Yukos will regard the tentative buyer as accomplice to deliberate bankruptcy, warns the appeal.
The Yuganskneftegaz stock is to sell on market patterns, in due publicity and at a just price, Oleg Vyugin, chief of the Federal Finance Market Service, stressed on an earlier occasion. As he sees it, an initial block of, say, 20 per cent, ought to start the matter. The revenues will go to the federal purse, and another block may follow in case of more claims, he argued.
The controversy round Yukos became not so vague as soon as announcements were made of its and certain other extracting companies' asset evaluation and forthcoming sale, remarked Mr. Vyugin.
The company will survive, though its cost will shrink after it is stripped of assets. Today's Yukos stock goes at about $6 a share. Many analysts think it is a reasonable price now that the giant is losing its Yuganskneftegaz. The company will keep afloat-but its holders stand to lose, he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Russia's leading government companies are not considering Yuganskneftegaz stock purchases, said German Gref, Minister of Economic Development and Trade.
When reporters asked him about such purchases, the minister said: "The government is not the one to buy up stock, and it will not take part in the deals. Yuganskneftegaz keeps out of the agenda whenever directors' boards of government giants gather for conference."
