86.2 billion rubles of back taxes, 14.8 billion rubles of fines, and about 70 billion of penalties. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on December 6, 2004, and 2005.
On this day 19 years ago, on December 6, 2004, specialists of the Tax Service of Russia took decision No 52/985 on bringing the JSC Oil Company Yukos to tax responsibility for the year 2003. By this document were assessed additional taxes, which, according to the inspection, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s company was short in payment to the state budget. From the whole sum of tax arrears to the amount of 170 billion rubles: 86.2 billion rubles is the sum of the taxes, 14.8 billion – fines, and about 70 billion rubles – penalties. Translated into rubles at the annual average exchange rate 30.68 in 2003, the sum amounted to $5 billion 541 million.
In the company which declared itself to the whole world as “the most transparent”, they didn’t agree with such formulation of the question and pretended that after a series of tax payments “the was no money left at all" in the company. This declaration "of poverty", against the backdrop of then still hidden from the public operations of the group "Trushin – Kurtsin”, was rather strange. On the one hand, the money is running out, on the other hand, funneling from the accounts of the company of pecuniary assets and cashing them out, according to materials of the criminal cases, proceeded at an accelerated tempo specifically in 2004.
Against this background, Yukos lawyers by word of mouth refuted the exactness of tax calculations and tried to fight on this matter in courts. For instance, the defense tried "to sabotage" the above-mentioned decision from 06.12.2004 No 52/985 “On bringing to tax responsibility the JSC Oil Company Yukos”.
The court litigations went not in favor of Yukos at all. New “tax tricks” of the company's management were exposed. One can mention schemes of tax evasion, front firms, registered to lost passports. Firms with a high circulation of money and oil, as well as activity "having no economic sense" and "no economic expediency”. The long and the short of it, in tax deals of the “transparent” Yukos was present the whole set of a “fraudulent tax dodger”.
A peculiar kind of reckoning in arbitration proceedings was the ruling from December 5, 2005, on the case NKA-A40/11321-05, which on the complaint of Yukos heard the Federal Arbitration Court of the Moscow region. The operative part of the judgment was voiced in November, and in full, the document was ready in December 2005.
The judicial instances correctly pointed out that, taking into account that the JSC Oil Company Yukos intentionally had taken actions directed at tax evasion, and its executive officers had been aware of the character of such actions, they either had wanted or consciously had presumed the onset of harmful consequences from such actions of the JSC Oil Company Yukos.
“Appropriate is the conclusion of the tax agency on taking the taxpayer to responsibility for non-payment or not full payment of taxes as the result of the lowering of the taxable base… in form of penalties to the amount of 40% from the non-paid sum of taxes”, was pointed out in the court’s ruling.
“On the whole, the latest effort to reverse the taken decisions turned out to be a failure for the Oil Company Yukos. In the materials of the court on repeated occasions was pointed out that the declaratory stance of the Yukos side does not correspond with the realities, collected documents and factual circumstances of the case", notes the website Prigovor.ru.
(See also the previous article “On this day, it was suggested to Lebedev’s lawyer “to wash down notes”. “Lebedev gave to Baru some sheet of paper, the lawyer read it and put it in his pocket”. “They should be provided with tea to water down notes”. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on December 5, 2003.
