A week tomorrow, Russia is expected to sell the core of Yukos to a Kremlin-backed rival at a bargain price, so enacting what most market watchers have called the worst possible scenario for both the nation's biggest oil firm and its investment climate.
But while Russian tycoons are spiriting cash abroad at an alarming rate, in apparent fear of a Yukos-style attack on their empires, foreign companies are defying warnings of state meddling by raising their profile in the world's largest country.
Government ministers expect $12 billion (€9 billion) in capital to leave Russia this year, compared to just $2.3 billion last year, as the nation's "oligarchs" seek to protect themselves from the kind of tax demands that have brought Yukos to its knees.
Uncertainty caused by the legal onslaught - which Yukos calls Kremlin-backed theft of its assets - was sharpened by a summer banking crisis that forced eight banks to go bust and kindled fears of the kind of financial meltdown that hit Russia in 1998.
The Russian stock market has plunged along with Yukos shares as the firm has battled a $20 billion tax bill and seen its founder, Kremlin critic Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, charged with fraud and tax evasion just as he prepared to sell a stake in the company to a US oil major.
Analysts say that the charges faced by Yukos could be used to attack hundreds of companies formed in the chaotic and corrupt days of post-Soviet Russia, prompting potential domestic investors to take their cash elsewhere rather than risk losing it or their assets to the tax ministry.
"Pressure on Yukos has undermined the level of confidence among so-called oligarchs, and they have resumed taking large amounts of capital out of Russia," Mr Alexei Moisseyev, an economist at Renaissance Capital, said.
According to a former economy minister, Mr Yevgeny Yasin, that cash could have helped fund social spending, the repair of Russia's decrepit infrastructure or diversification from its heavy reliance on oil, gas and metals.
"Capital flight is terrible, because we could use that money to modernise the economy," Mr Yasin says. "The Yukos case symbolises the fact that the government wants to control the economy."
An economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin, Mr Andrei Illarionov, goes even further: "The risk of a return to a planned (economy) really exists."
"The seizure by the state of the economy's commanding heights, in particular in the energy sector, is a guarantee of stagnation." This apparent desire for control has undermined the faith that Mr Putin created in investors during his first Kremlin term, when he presided over steady growth and pushed through much-needed tax reform.
The markets, which fear uncertainty, liked the fact that he promised the stability and consistency that his predecessor, the unwell and unpredictable Mr Boris Yeltsin, never could.
Mr Yeltsin presided over the sale of state assets to a coterie of well-connected businessmen - the "oligarchs" - in the 1990s, during a period when at least $20 billion a year disappeared from Russia into offshore accounts and foreign-held businesses.
Some of that money seemed to be returning in recent years but, in the teeth of the Yukos affair, it is foreigners rather than locals who are showing confidence in Russia.
Foreign direct investment is increasing, and should top $10 billion this year.
New faces are entering the market, and relative veterans like energy groups Royal Dutch/Shell and ExxonMobil are still spending billions of dollars in Russia's Far East.
Analysts say foreign investors may face far fewer risks in Russia than local magnates, because they are not perceived as any potential domestic political threat - as Mr Khodorkovsky was - and because Mr Putin is keen to polish an international image badly tarnished by the Yukos case.
But while the economy is set to grow by more than 7 per cent again this year, Russia's reliance on high world prices for oil and other commodities is dangerous, and government clashes over the speed and depth of reform have undermined confidence and hampered Mr Putin's ambition to double the size of the economy by 2010.
"The Yukos affair, random statements by top government officials and clashing policy priorities are not helping the doubling of Russia's GDP and the necessary diversification of the economy from oil-related industries," Mr Pavel Erochkine, head of research at the London-based Centre for Global Studies, said.
Some government ministers have dismissed the influence of the "Yukos effect" on capital flight, and welcomed its corollary of cooling rouble appreciation and dampening inflation.
Many international investors now see Russia as great bargain-hunting territory, but analysts believe the Kremlin is playing a dangerous game if it is relying on fickle foreign capital to replace domestic money that has been badly spooked by the dismembering of Yukos. "Oligarchs remain the financial muscle of Russia," says Mr Peter Westin, an economist at Moscow's Aton brokerage. "With the (Russian) banking sector as underdeveloped as it is, there is no real substitute for their money."
