New Executive of Yukos Jailed

An executive recently assigned to saving Yukos oil company from filing for bankruptcy protection has been arrested on charges of embezzlement and money-laundering, prosecutors said Thursday.

Vasily Aleksanian was being interrogated, a spokeswoman for the general prosecutor’s office said. His lawyer, Gevorg Davgyan, said later that charges were filed against him, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

Aleksanian was appointed vice president at Yukos last week after heading its legal department. The company has been crippled by billions of dollars in back tax bills that are widely seen as political retribution, and has been put under external supervision until bankruptcy hearings June 27.

Billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky had built Yukos into Russia’s biggest oil producer before he was jailed and the company dismantled and nationalized.