The US chief executive of fallen Russian oil major YUKOS has tendered his resignation before a meeting of creditors today that is expected to take the company a step closer to bankruptcy.
Steven Theede said he would boycott the creditors' meeting, denouncing it as a "sham" which would lead to the breakup of YUKOS, once Russia's largest oil company which has been laid low by $33 billion in back-tax claims.
In a resignation letter, Mr Theede wrote that court-appointed administrator Eduard Rebgun had concluded that "financial restructuring is impossible and liquidation is the only viable alternative".
Mr Theede also wrote in the letter, dated July 19th, that Rebgun had ignored a management restructuring plan and concluded that YUKOS was worth $15 billion, while it had debts of $17 billion.
"I anticipate a sham meeting tomorrow (Thursday), attended mostly by those who are intent on destroying the rest of YUKOS and taking its assets with no serious consideration being given to our financial restructuring plan," Theede wrote.
YUKOS's largest creditor is the Federal Tax Office, which it owes around $13 billion. The second-largest is state-controlled oil firm Rosneft, which has just raised $10.4 billion in Russia's largest initial public stock offering and bought YUKOS's largest oil production unit in 2004 after a forced auction.
Rosneft CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov said on the fringes of the G8 summit in St Petersburg last weekend that he hoped to buy some of YUKOS's oil refineries. Rosneft says YUKOS owes it $3.2 billion but that figure could rise to $4.5 billion