Translated material
Mikhail II
An arrest warrant has been issued for the former head of Russneft
The Tverskoy Court of Moscow yesterday issued a warrant in absentia for the arrest of the former head of the RussNeft company, Mikhail Gutseriev. Thus, the story of clashes with law enforcement officers pursuing the businessman since the end of last year continued. Although the authorities' claims against Mr. Gutseriev seem less ambitious than those put forward at one time against YUKOS and its head Mikhail Khodorkovsky (who is now serving an eight-year sentence and awaiting a new trial ), the same fate seems to be in store for him. The only difference is that Mr. Gutseriev, according to unofficial information, chose to prudently go abroad. Now it is possible that he will join the “emigrant circle” in London, where many other persons involved in high-profile investigations by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, including top managers of the same YUKOS, are hiding from Russian justice.It is noteworthy that, according to the popular version, Mr. Gutseriev brought trouble on his own head, in particular, again because of the “YUKOS case”, having decided to buy part of the assets of this company and thereby crossing the path of more powerful contenders who have unconditional support government agencies.
As it turned out, the Investigative Committee (IC) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation applied to the court with a petition for the arrest of Mr. Gutseriev. Since the fall of last year, the department, at the suggestion of the Prosecutor General's Office, has been investigating a criminal case regarding the failure to pay taxes on a particularly large scale by Russneft . The Investigative Committee began making claims against Mr. Gutseriev himself, who at first was only a witness in the investigation, in February, when the entrepreneur was officially accused of tax evasion. In May, the head of the oil company, along with three partners heading the company’s subsidiaries, was suspected of illegal business . As a representative of the prosecution said in court yesterday, Mr. Gutseriev has not appeared for interrogations for several weeks, and on August 6 he was put on the international wanted list. Now, after his detention, he is subject to immediate arrest.
A little less than a month has passed since Mikhail Gutseriev announced that he was voluntarily resigning as president of Russneft and now intends to devote himself to scientific activities. At the same time, Mr. Gutseriev published a letter in which he noted that he was leaving the company under pressure. “I was offered to leave the oil business, to leave “in an amicable way.” I refused. Then, in order to make me more accommodating, the company was subjected to unprecedented persecution,” said the address of the ex-president of Russneft to its employees, posted on the company’s official website.
Law enforcement agencies took over Russneft in the fall of 2006. At the initiative of the Prosecutor General's Office, an investigation was launched, which was based on materials from inspections of the tax service and the department of economic security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Preliminary investigations showed that the managers of three Russneft subsidiaries - ZAO Nafta-Ulyanovsk, OAO Ulyanovskneft and OAO Aganneftegazgeologiya (ANGG) - were engaged in the sale of oil produced in violation of license agreements. Several criminal cases initiated on the grounds of illegal business were combined into one proceeding at the end of last year and transferred for investigation to the Investigative Committee.
“The investigation so far has no complaints against the president of Russneft himself. However, who knows where the investigation of the case will lead,” a source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs close to the investigation meaningfully told Vremya Novostey. And very soon these claims appeared. In January, he was interrogated for the first time as a witness, and already in February - after a series of searches in the company and its subsidiaries - he was already accused of tax evasion. At that time, however, we were talking about a ridiculous amount for an oil company of 1.7 million rubles.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs “found” another case for Mikhail Gutseriev in May, suspecting him of “illegal business activities committed by an organized group and associated with the extraction of income on a particularly large scale.” After searches carried out in April in four Moscow banks at once, detectives came into the hands of documents that, in their opinion, testified to the existence of an established system for evading VAT payment. According to the Investigative Committee, bank employees developed this scheme for Russneft, and the oil company used it for a year and a half - from the summer of 2004 to the end of 2005.
Mr. Gutseriev and his three companions, who head the company's subsidiaries - Viktor Kurochkin's Nafta-Ulyanovsk, Igor Elansky's Ulyanovskneft, Sergei Bakhir's ANGG, were given a written undertaking not to leave. All suspects categorically denied their guilt. Moreover, to this day they continue to work in their posts.
It is not clear exactly what specific justifications for the arrest of Mikhail Gutseriev were given in court by representatives of the Investigative Committee. The businessman’s lawyer, Alla Yaminskaya, categorically refused to contact the press. However, as it became known yesterday, on August 6, investigators prepared documents to put the businessman on the international wanted list. The investigation allegedly has information that the businessman went abroad and has no intention of returning to Russia.
“The court issued a sanction for the arrest of Gutseriev in absentia, since the investigation provided reliable evidence that the person involved in the case is outside the Russian Federation. If the ex-head of Russneft were on Russian territory, his search would be conducted at the federal level, and the investigation would not go to court with a sanction for arrest in absentia,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs explained unofficially.
Meanwhile, a few days ago, information appeared in a number of media outlets that the disgraced businessman was seen in the village of Chermen, Prigorodny District of North Ossetia, where on August 23, at the family cemetery, he buried his 22-year-old son, Genghis Khan, who died in an accident in Moscow. According to other information, the ex-head of RussNeft is currently in the UK.
Today, the Moscow Arbitration Court will consider two claims by the Federal Tax Service to invalidate previously concluded transactions with RussNeft shares. In July, the Lefortovo Court of Moscow, at the request of the Investigative Committee, arrested 100% of the shares of the oil company, but the decision has not yet entered into legal force, since the company appealed it.
It is known that at the end of July, when Mr. Gutseriev announced his resignation from the company, RussNeft and Basic Element, controlled by Oleg Deripaska, submitted an application to the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) for the purchase by Bazel of a controlling stake in the oil company . This deal was actually talked about as if it had already taken place. However, at this moment, the court, at the request of the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, arrested the shares of RussNeft, and the leadership of the FAS stated that the purchase application was executed improperly. It became clear that there were even more powerful claimants to the oil company's assets than Mr. Deripaska. Now, after the announcement of the arrest of Mikhail Gutseriev, it becomes clear that even abandoning the company (which, by the way, Mikhail Khodorkovsky did not do) and leaving the business does not relieve the “forceful” persecution.