STEVEN THEEDE, the chief executive of Yukos, will miss the beleaguered oil company’s annual meeting in Moscow today amid fears that he and other executives will be intimidated by Russian authorities.
Mr Theede, who is up for election to Yukos’s board at the meeting, has not been to Russia — where all of his company’s assets are — since last November. Yukos claims that the company is being run effectively by its Russian-based managers, negating the need for Mr Theede to be there.
Lawyers for Yukos have been seeking assurances from Russia’s prosecutors that Mr Theede and other non-Russian executives can return to Russia without fear of being intimidated or interfered with in their attempts to run the company, or hauled in for questioning by authorities as soon as they arrive in the country.
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Bruce Misamore, the chief financial officer, moved from Moscow to Houston in early December after claiming that he feared for his safety in Russia. He said at the time: “I am not going to sacrifice my life for [Russia’s] political purposes.”
Today’s shareholder meeting will be the first since Yukos lost control of Yuganskneftegaz, its biggest asset, which accounted for about 60 per cent of oil production, after a state-organised auction in December.
Yukos has already claimed during various court proceedings that its makeshift headquarters were in Houston, in part to boost the validity of legal actions in US courts.
Yukos believes that the Kremlin actions against it are politically motivated and in breach of international law. However, it has so far been unable to prevent Russia’s tax authorities from dismantling the company, and three weeks ago watched as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yukos’s founder, was sentenced to nine years in a prison camp after being found guilty of tax evasion and fraud.
A Yukos spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that Mr Theede, who is in the UK, would not attend the meeting, despite offering himself up for election to the company’s main board.
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Mr Theede is one of 11 candidates up for election to the board. Shareholders will also be asked to approve Yukos’s annual report for last year. The meeting is expected to be a formality, despite the uncertainty surrounding Yukos’s future.
There have been repeated reports in the Russian media that the country’s tax authorities are also targeting Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz, Yukos’s remaining operating assets, to pay for more than $24.5 billion worth of outstanding tax claims.
The Russian Government has been largely unrepentant over the way in which it has pursued Yukos’s management and dismantled the company, despite widespread criticism from the international business and political community.