Amsterdam went on a rampage. The efforts of “Menatep” to foil paying tax arrears by Yukos. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on December 13, 2004.
On this day 19 years ago, on December 13, 2004, foreign representatives of the “main shareholders” from “Menatep” made a series of nervous statements in foreign publications. They threatened “to file a lawsuit against anybody”, who would buy at action sale the main Yukos affiliate – the company “Yuganskneftegaz”. The action sale to put up a stock of shares of the main production company, which was part of Yukos, was set for December 19, 2004. Foreign directors started to make feverish actions, directed at foiling the action sale, with the proceeds of which it was decided to discharge multibillion debts of the Oil Company Yukos.
Manipulating public opinion, the "savior" of Yukos made their appearances in the Western press, rebuking everybody and everything. However, specialists and participants of the market were well aware – Khodorkovsky had not only swindled but also aggressively avoided paying taxes, thus committing a crime. But foreign press knew about it as well, and there had been a lot of articles about the dubious affairs of the "robber barons", who, in a flash, had become very rich". The Western media, for the sake of objectivity, have to mention the sums of the tax "skeletons", suddenly fell out from the "transparent" closet of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil empire. The BBC news service found out that the sum of the tax arrears amounted to 26 billion U.S. dollars. Thereat, British reporters, obviously not wanting to get to the bottom of the story, said that the sum of the recovering payment for the Russian company was determined by prosecutors, whereas all calculations, in due order, were made by specialists of the Tax service. On the other hand, the list of threats from the saboteurs, the journalists of BBC presented as by dictation.
ADVERTISING LEAFLETS OF AMSTERDAM AND OSBORNE
The British business newspaper “The Financial Times”, having mentioned the sum of the back tax bill to the tune of 24 billion dollars, started to cite Tim Osborne, the director of “Menatep”, who in advance pleaded guilty “all those who will help to carry out the action sale”. “For me, it’s very difficult to imagine a situation, in which we would refrain to appeal to a court. We cannot simply sit idly and watch how the key property of Yukos is being expropriated, and not to undertake anything”, argued with indignation Mr. Osborne.
Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Robert Amsterdam, another lover of manifestos, declared on the pages of the newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” that, “starting today, “Menatep” launches an advertising in the main Western newspapers, which will contain a warning that all potential buyers of “Yuganskneftegaz” during “the forced auction sale” would face legal proceedings. “We are going to inform everybody that these are stolen goods”, argued Amsterdam. Translated from “Amsterdamian” to normal language, it would read, approximately, like this: “We, once more, are bribing editorial boards of leading publications, and they will stop reporting that Yukos was stolen by Khodorkovsky. Having paid money, we will tell that Yukos was stolen by participants of the action sale". Though it was an accidental revelation of Amsterdam, everybody knew about it without his help.
It’s interesting that the emotional “envelop of threats”, published in the Western media, avoided one simple issue. Everybody reported that the auction sale was planned, possible participants were emotionally numbered, in passing was mention the back tax bill to the tune of 24-26 billion dollars, but, on the way, they lost the fact that "the terms to settle arrears were unjustifiably delayed”, and they kept silent that the action was scheduled in order “to reliably settle the tax arrears”.
Later, foreign managers, hired by Khodorkovsky, understood that “the colonial scheme” functioned nor more, and they all escaped from Russia – to Texas, where they continue the series of their dubious operations”, noted the website Prigovor.ru.
(See also the previous article “On this day, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev remained in custody”. From 1998 to 2004, an organized group of persons from the "main shareholders" stole and legalized 450 billion rubles and $7.5 billion. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on December 12, 2007.
