President Vladimir Putin of Russia has denied that politics was driving a legal crackdown on the Yukos oil giant and its founder, Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a day after the firm's biggest shareholder launched legal action against the Russian government.
Group Menatep, which owns about 60 per cent of Yukos, filed a complaint against the planned sale of the company's main production unit next month to help pay off tax arrears, which now total over $20 billion (€15 billion) and threaten to sink Russia's biggest oil firm.
Yukos and many analysts say the tax bills are part of a Kremlin-backed effort to dismember the company, hand the best sections to state-friendly rivals and silence Mr Khodorkovsky and other powerful potential foes of Mr Putin.
"We are talking about the expropriation of our property, and we intend to protect it through all possible legal means," said Menatep's managing director, Mr Tim Osborne. He was referring to government plans to auction Yukos's Yugansk subsidiary on December 19th, for about half the $17 billion value placed on the unit by many industry experts.
Mr Osborne said Menatep had begun legal action under the auspices of the Energy Charter, an international treaty providing a framework to protect investments in the energy sector. A signatory to the Energy Charter, however, Russia has not ratified the document, making its obligations under its terms unclear.
Mr Putin, a former KGB spy who has brought many security-service veterans into the halls of power since becoming president in 2000, insisted that the prosecution of Yukos and Mr Khodorkovsky was not a political vendetta.
"Khodorkovsky was never involved in politics. He was never a parliamentary deputy. He never led a political party," said Mr Putin of Russia's richest man and probably the president's most powerful domestic critic, who was arrested in October 2003 on charges of fraud and tax evasion.
"It is wrong to cast the criminal side of this case as political," said Mr Putin. "Everyone must be equal before the law, must obey it, pay taxes and, correspondingly, must accept the punishment when the law is violated."
