No rush

The trial of the PricewaterhouseCoopers subsidiary is dragging on

The court hearings initiated by the Federal Tax Service against the Yukos auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, cannot reach a constructive stage. But they are constantly overgrown with scandalous details. Yesterday, the fourth court hearing took place, and this time it stalled on the initiative of representatives of YUKOS bankruptcy manager Eduard Rebgun, who unexpectedly challenged judge Pavel Markov. And the Federal Tax Service lawyers turned to Mr. Markov with a request to request from the Prosecutor General’s Office a whole list of documents proving “the awareness of PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors about the state of affairs in the company,” which were identified during the audit. The extensive list of requested materials included both correspondence between auditors and YUKOS top managers, as well as memoranda and reports of the oil company since 1999, including data on the volume of export supplies of raw materials. At the same time, in response to the indignant question from PwC lawyers about how the Federal Tax Service got such a detailed list of confidential documents, the tax authorities were forced to admit: the list was provided by the Prosecutor General’s Office itself. The court granted this request.

Mr. Rebgun’s lawyers explained the decision to recall the judge yesterday by the fact that it was Mr. Markov who led the hearings on the bankruptcy of YUKOS: “The YUKOS bankruptcy case concerned the company’s activities in the period 2000-2006. The Federal Tax Service is challenging the audit reports made by PricewaterhouseCoopers for 2002-2004, which falls within the bankruptcy deadlines. In this regard, we believe that the judge is indirectly interested in the outcome of this case.” However, they did not explain why the judge was challenged just yesterday, and not from the beginning of the consideration of the case. The court considered the bankruptcy trustee's arguments unsubstantiated and refused to challenge Mr. Markov. The court was forced to spend more than two hours on this decision, and as a result, the hearings were postponed again - this time until March 20.

The Federal Tax Service accuses the Russian subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers of knowing about the tax fraud of the oil company's management, it deliberately did not inform the company's shareholders about it. According to tax authorities, in 2002, PwC auditors drew up two reports: one for YUKOS top managers, in which they pointed out an identified tax evasion scheme through the Production Financial Support Fund, the second for shareholders, in which they reported that YUKOS' activities comply with Russian legislation. At the beginning of this year, the Federal Tax Service filed a lawsuit against PricewaterhouseCoopers in the arbitration court. The amount of recovery specified in the claim was initially not very large - about 145 thousand dollars. Later, during preliminary hearings, tax authorities increased their demands to 480 thousand dollars. But, as experts note, the main thing in this case is not the amount of payments , and the business reputation of the auditor. Indeed, if PwC is found guilty, it faces the closure of its Russian representative office. The consequences for its business reputation in the world are generally difficult to predict.

It is possible that another delay in the process is due to inspections carried out last Friday by employees of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the PricewaterhouseCoopers office. As representatives of law enforcement agencies said, the reasons for the checks were different. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were looking for documents at the request of the Federal Tax Service on tax arrears of PwC for 2002 in the amount of 243 million rubles, and representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office seized documents related to the criminal case regarding the activities of YUKOS in the same 2002. At the same time, both departments claim that the double raid was caused only by a simple coincidence. But PricewaterhouseCoopers complains that during these coincidental checks, documents not only from five years ago were seized, but also for all subsequent years, including the current year.

Anna GORSHKOVA