Yukos was buying “borehole liquid” for 250 rubles a ton, thus lowering the severance tax nearly threefold. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on September 30, 2005.
At the end of September 2005, the publishing house “Olma-Press” submitted to the approval of its readers a documental investigation of the famous writer Alexander Bushkov under the title “Haunted House. The Chronicle of the Muddy Time”. In his work, based on multiple sources, the author shared with readers his perception of those economic and political shocks that Russia had been experiencing since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It stands to reason that he allotted a special place to oligarchs who overnight had become the richest people of the country. It goes without saying, that among other procreations of “the frenzy of the invisible market hand”, happened to be also Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The media outlet “Dni.ru” (Дни.ру), which published extracts of this book in September 2005, already then characterized Khodorkovsky as “exalted person” who had created a criminal, in its essence, empire. And this very essence, after the book had been published, was confirmed by materials of criminal cases, court proceedings, and, which is the most important, courts verdicts most of which were held in all superior jurisdictions.
Khodorkovsky's innovation – "liquid in the mouth of a borehole"
The Yukos tricks with the notorious “borehole liquid” – an innovation introduced by Khodorkovsky – the author of the book, as befits a writer, explained simple and plain, without academic complexities. Here are quotations:
“The extracted oil is levied with severance tax. It is levied only once, from an extracting enterprise, and after that, it does not appear anywhere. And here is that was contrived by Yukos – the company bought from producing firms not oil, but certain “liquid in the borehole mouth”. I.e., a liquid, which, by its composition, was no different from crude oil, but was simply called differently. What for? Again, it’s as simple as that.
There are specific market prices on crude oil. For example, in 1999, when these tricks were mentioned for the first time, a ton of oil on the inner Russian market cost about 800 rubles, and on the international market – 73 US dollars. As the "borehole liquid" Yukos was buying it for 250 rubles a ton, thus lowering the severance tax nearly three times. That said, there was no transformation with the “liquid” itself, and all metamorphoses existed only on paper. On the other hand, savings were considerable”.
…Just at that time teachers, physicians, servicemen did not receive their salaries and wages. As to Yukos, in addition to its billions, it siphoned abroad millions “spared” in such a way”, noted the website Prigovor.ru.
(See also the previous article “On this day, Khodorkovsky was going to travel abroad”. “To reach the top of the world oil business by the time of the 45th anniversary of Mr. Khodorkovsky. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on September 29, 2003.м
