Putin Hints State Utility May Get Yukos Unit

The previously unknown firm that made the winning bid for beleaguered Yukos Oil Co.’s core production facility will probably make it available to the state-controlled Gazprom natural gas company, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin indicated Tuesday.

Speaking at a news conference in Germany, Putin endorsed the forced auction. He also revealed that he had detailed knowledge of the buyers and the property’s probable future, placing himself in the middle of an international controversy over the sale.

The firm Baikalfinansgroup won a controlling 76.8% stake in Yukos subsidiary Yuganskneftegaz at the auction Sunday, in effect gutting the dominant Russian oil firm. Its offer of $9.3 billion was about half of the $18 billion that foreign auditors said the subsidiary was worth.

All of the purchaser’s shareholders are private individuals “who for many years have been doing business in the energy sphere,” Putin told reporters after a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

“They intend to build some kind of relationship with other energy companies of Russia that are interested in this asset,” Putin said. Responding to a question, he said that state-owned companies and others had the right to acquire the property from the buyers.

Critics charge that Russian authorities are dismembering Yukos to get control of its assets and punish its former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a political opponent of Putin. Russia claims that the company owes $27 billion in back taxes. Khodorkovsky was arrested last year and is on trial for allegedly engineering a $1.4-billion tax fraud. He remains in jail.

Putin’s most revealing comment came in relation to reports that China’s state energy company might be involved with Yuganskneftegaz and the auction. Putin said the Chinese had nothing to do with the auction, but that they had an agreement to cooperate with Gazprom.

“We don’t rule out a possibility that the state energy company of China will take part in the work of this asset which was sold at this auction. I mean Yuganskneftegaz,” Putin continued. “It is quite possible.”

Gazprom was originally expected to be the winner of the auction. Analysts said that having an unknown firm come out on top might have been a maneuver aimed at taking control of the production facility without having Gazprom assume unnecessary legal risks.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston last week issued a 10-day injunction banning the auction of Yuganskneftegaz after Yukos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The court was due to resume hearings today. Yukos says it will pursue damages against anyone associated with the auction. If the sale of the auctioned stock is completed, Yukos will lose more than $20 billion, it said.

Liliya Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Putin might have revealed more than he intended at the news conference.

She said Putin had focused on the Chinese angle. “But while concentrating on this question ... President Putin must have inadvertently made a slip of the tongue which gave away the fact that Yuganskneftegaz was actually bought by some company which in the near future will be brought into the orbit of Gazprom,” she said.

Efforts may be made to give the deal legitimacy by building cooperation between a state-owned oil company formed from Yuganskneftegaz and Western firms and China’s state energy company, Shevtsova said.

“Such consultations must already be underway,” she said.

After Putin made his comment, Gazprom confirmed that it and China National Petroleum Corp. recently concluded an agreement on cooperation “related to crude production in the territory of Russia.” The statement noted that the two firms previously had an agreement that mainly involved natural gas.

Putin’s statements that individuals, not a major corporation, own the company that won Sunday’s auction and that he knew them, also provoked a sharp reaction from some observers.

The bid Sunday for the core Yukos asset resembles the way Khodorkovsky gained control of the company in the 1990s, buying lucrative assets for far less than their real value, said Yulia Latynina, a columnist for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

The Chinese involvement may be a red herring, she added.

“I am only surprised that President Putin himself takes part in this major cover-up effort,” she said. “It just proves one point: Today President Putin for the first time made a public confession that the Khodorkovsky case was not about punishing a company and its management for not paying taxes. He confessed today that it was all about dividing Yukos in favor of the friends of President Putin.”

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.