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Squeezing Down the Price
The worth of Russneft Oil Co. goes through the break-neck fall. Moscow Arbitration sustained 17-billion ruble tax claims to Russneft straight after the seizure of 100 percent of its stocks. After it, the aggregate debt of the company surged to above 20 billion rubles.
Moscow Arbitration upheld Friday additional tax claims to Russneft charged for the second half of 2004 and for 2005. The overall amount stands at 17 billion rubles, including 13.3 billion rubles as tax claims, the penalty of 1.1 billion rubles and fines of 2.62 billion rubles. The 3.5-billion tax claims for 2003 and first half of 2004 were sustained by the first-instance court on July 23.
Tax charges are based on procedures applied by Russneft for crude purchase. For some reason, that company used to buy crude from its production divisions not directly, but via the formally independent traders. The result was underestimated tax base coupled with overvalued deductions of VAT. The next move of Russneft was to withdraw traders’ profits that matched its own profits, by the way, to some offshore companies, to which it had sold interest in involved traders.
So, if courts of higher instance don’t trim tax claims, Russneft will have to pay over 20 billion rubles. According to analysts, the company is capable of parting with such huge sum of money, but it will hardly satisfy authorities. The aim is to make current owners more compliant when negotiating the sale of Russneft. Once the price compromise is reached, the company will have a new master and the conflict with Federal Tax Service will die out, the analysts forecast.
Of interest is that, on July 30, Basic Element of Oleg Deripaska applied to the Federal Antimonopoly Service for the sanction to buy out Russneft. The latter could be sold with 50 percent discount, the analysts predicted after Lefortovo Court seized 100 percent in Russneft on July 31. The price is likely to sink to from $3 billion to $4.5 billion vs. the market value of $6 billion to $9 billion.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 13, 2007
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