What's going on with Yukos?
I should know - I worked with Yukos for many years and I even had lunch with Khodorkhovski a few years back; I know a lot a people over there - but I don't. Nobody, it seems, really knows, even those that could or should.
The obvious idea is that Putin, or people close to him, want to capture the wealth associated with the company, directly (change ownership) or indirectly (nationalise). The problem is that Yukos's shareholders are not stupid and they have tied their money very tightly with that of "Western" shareholders and Western banks (I put quote around Western because a lot of the money invested into Russia by foreigners actually belongs, via offshore vehivles, to Russians. The banks are really Western). So, to take moany from them, you also need to take it from Citi, ABN-Amro, etc... which Putin obviously wants to avoid.
The people doing the "takeover" are of course saying " don't worry, we'll pay you back once this is settled, but the Yukos guys are saying to all: "any assets of ours that ends up in your hands - we'll sue you to death in every jurisdiction around the world, especially in the US, with RICO or the Aliens Tort Act". So you have a funny slow motion take over, where the assailers have every lever but have to maintain a fiction of legality, while Yukos basically threatens MAD (we go down, we take the Westerners with us and bring down the country again) and the Westerners try to stay out of the way ("okay, you have 1.5b$ in hostage, maybe you need only 1b$, pay us back a little, and we'll tell the other side to back off a little..." to one side, "we don't really care who owns Yukos, as long as we get repaid, but it must look legal" to the other)
The view from a year ago:
Latynina 23 July 2002
The view from a few days ago:
Latynina 23 June 2004
I especially recommend the second one.
