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FSB Searches BP Again
The FSB has again carried out an investigative action in the Moscow office of the British company BP. There was no official explanation for the action yesterday. Sources inside BP said that the FSB showed interested in British citizens working for the company who could have been cooperating with bothers Alexander and Ilya Zaslavsky, who are accused by the FSB of industrial espionage. A BP spokesman in Moscow confirmed the FSN visit and said that the company’s Moscow office was functioning normally and that it was cooperating with the FSB investigation. The FSB public relations center would not confirm or deny that investigative action.
On March 19, FSB representatives visited the offices of TNK-BP and BP in Moscow. TNK-BP is Russian’s third largest oil producer, in which BP owns 50 percent. The following day, the FSB stated that the offices were searched as part of the investigation of TNK-BP Management employee Ilya Zaslavsky and his brother Alexander, who was the head of the British Council’s Graduate’s Club. They have not been taken into custody and, sources say, were not contacted by the FSB yesterday. A BP source said that the FSB was interested in company managers, who are citizens of Great Britain. That is possibly connected with the allegation that Ilya Zaslavsky received information on the reserves of natural gas at a field being developed by a subsidiary of Gazprom for his British employers.
That is not the company’s only problem. At the beginning of the year, 147 of its employees working in TNK-BP were unable to extend their Russian visas. After that problem was cleared up, a previously unknown company, ZAO Tetlis, filed suit at the beginning of this month demanding that TNK-BP be prohibited from hiring Britons. That suit will be heard today in a court in Tyumen. Two explanations have been suggested for the company’s problems. The first is that Gazprom wants to buy a share in it. The other is a conflict between the current shareholders. Sources confirm that there is a conflict between the British shareholders and the Russian (Leonard Blavatnik, Viktor Vekselberg and Mikhail Fridman). The management of Tetlis previously had close ties to Fridman’s Alfa Group. Alfa Group denies having ties to Tetlis or the existence of a conflict among TNK-BP shareholders.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 21, 2008
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