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*03.07.2001*
*Moscow Times*
*Anna Ruff*
Tyumen Oil Co. has deployed a team of armed security guards to secure n western Siberian oil complex claimed by a Canadian producer.
The complex belongs to Yugraneft, a small oil company with annual production of 35O.OOO tons a year. Nwex petroleum Ltd. - an oil services company — owns 60 percent of Yugraneft, but those shares were frozen last late month by the local arbitration court in Khanty-Mainsiisk.
With Norex's shares frozen, Tyumen Oil-controlled Chernogorneft, which owns a part of Yugraneft, last week called an extraordinary meeting of Yugraneft shareholders to install their own general director at the helm.
The new director, however, has yet to receive any of the official documents of the official company stamp needed to start giving orders. Yugraneft's former general director, Ludmila Kondrashinaya, said Friday the company premises had been cordoned off by Tyumen Oil, or TNK, guards.
"This isn't personal, this isn't commercial," said Norex chairman Alex Rotzang on Monday. "It's robbery. It's behavior typical of gangster capitalism. Russia's heralded dictatorship of the law doesn't exist."
In response, Rotzang threatened to sabotage any attempts by TNK to float securities on international markets. He says he has also enlisted the help of U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Earlier this year. Helms criticized No. I LUKoil's "roguish behavior" in a letter to U.S. security officials. This scandal is on the desk of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Rotzang added.
From what we can tell, it looks like an illegal confiscation of asset," said Graham Rush, the Canadian Embassy's minister-counselor for commercial affairs. 'It seems to have been based on a fraudulent shareholders mooting. It looks like the use of force and the potential for violence. It's a major negative signal to Canadian and foreign investors," Rush told the Toronto-based newspaper The Globe and Mail.
TNK is not taking any of these threats seriously, said TNK spokesman Dmitry Ivanov.
"The struggle for Yugraneft began in 1999, when TNK got control of rival Sidanco's main production unit, Chernogorneft, during shady bankruptcy proceedings against Sidanco played out it the same Khanty-Mansiisk court that froze Norex's shares in Yugraneft. British Petroleum, which paid hundreds of millions of dollars for a stake in Sidanco, challenged the move and the ensuing war drew international attention. The conflict with BP has yet to be resolved.
After the acquisition. TNK began to analyze Chernogorneft's holdings and found that the operator had a stake in Yugraneft, 85 kilometers north of the city of Niznevartovsk.
"We discovered that Yugraneft was being run as if it was completely owned by Norex," Ivanov said. "We approached Norex. They didn't want to work with us. We look action." •TNK says it owns 40 percent of Yugraneft; Norex says TNK owns 2.36 percent.
The arbitration court decision sought by and granted to TNK involves $5.8 million worth of "know-how" Norex used to buy into Yugraneft in 1992. TNK claims that this "know-how" consisted of instructions on how to wash cars and feed oil workers, and asked Judge Valery Bersenyov to freeze Norex's shares and voting power in Yugraneft.
Rotzang counters that in 1993 Norex sent 173 railroad cars of equipment, adding that the last time Russia received such a shipment was during World War II.
Bersenyov granted TNK's petition, and an expert commission to evaluate Norex's charter capital contribution was supposed to be formed Saturday.
Bersenyov declined to explain why he froze Norex's voting rights, which allowed TNK to call the shareholders meeting and take over.
"I usually don't comment on cases," he said. "And on this one I definitely won't."
In Russia, ownership - if ever revealed - isn't always what it seems. In 1999, Norex found that Chernogoneft failed to contribute to Yugraneft's charter fund, and a shareholders meeting voted to have Chernogorneft share reduced from 40 percent to 2,36 percent.
The Khanty-Mansiisk arbitration court - the same one TNK used for its latest maneuver overturned the dilution decision in 2000, and Norex lost on appeal.
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