Russia Freezes Yukos Shares
Russian authorities have frozen a controlling packet of shares in national oil giant Yukos, the company has said.
The action comes days after the authorities stepped up investigations into the firm by arresting chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky on fraud and tax evasion charges.
"A controlling stake of 61%... has been seized, although these shares still retain voting and dividend rights," Reuters quoted a Yukos spokesman as saying.
A Yukos spokesperson confirmed to BBC News Online that the share freeze had taken place but declined to give details.
Prosecutors are thought to have taken nominal control of the Yukos stake owned by Menatep, the financial vehicle run by Mr Khodorkovsky and key allies, most of whom are now in prison or facing investigation. The Menatep partners cannot now undertake transactions with their Yukos shares.
Earlier today the company announced a record dividend payment of $2bn, one of the largest in Russian corporate history and ahead of market expectations.
Khodorkovsky is in line for a $730m dividend from his Yukos shares
Mr Khodorkovsky, who owns 36.6% of Yukos should make about $730m from the payout.
The arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky has hit Russian stock markets, with up to 20% losses on the MICEX and RTS exchanges this week.
Meanwhile, Yukos directors have issued a statement standing firmly behind Mr Khodorkovsky.
"The board... declares its full support and belief in the management of the company and states its certainty that a fair and open court hearing will find the arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky illegal and all accusations against him groundless," the statement says.
Political
The case against Mr Khodorkovsky, one of Russia's richest and most powerful individuals, is widely seen as political and Mr Putin faces questions from anxious businessmen about the Kremlin's attitude to Russia's rising class of the independently wealthy.
Mr Khodorkovsky has funded political parties critical of Mr Putin in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December.
Mr Putin has been well regarded by investors as a source of stability and guarantor of economic reform, but Yukos is seen as a flagship moderniser among Russian blue chips.
In his only public comments on the arrest the Russian president has insisted the case against Yukos is a judicial matter and part of a general fight against corruption.
Bandit capitalism
Mr Khodorkovsky, through his Menatep group, was a leading figure among the young business elite - the so-called "oligarchs" - which gained power and influence through murky privatisations in the 1990s.
The prospect of a widescale purge of that generation would leave few of Russia's new millionaires unperturbed.
That campaign was stepped up on Wednesday when prosecutors sought to lift immunity protecting Vasily Shakhnovsky, a major Yukos shareholder who was recently elected to Russia's upper house of parliament.
In a sign of widening political repurcussions from the battle, reports have spread of the resignation of Alexander Voloshin, Mr Putin's chief of staff and a lynchpin in the Kremlin's handling of its backers in big business.
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