The Kommersant daily believes that Baikal Finance Group will resale the frozen stake in Yuganskneftegaz to Gazprom using certain financial schemes. The asset may also be sold secretly. The daily provides the description of yesterday’s auction.

Lawyers working for the MENATEP Group asked the Russian Federal Property Fund to authorize their presence at the proposed auction. “We want to see how the court ruling is implemented,” they stressed. But police officers detained them after the lawyers had driven to the office of the Russian Federal Property Fund. The reason was that the lawyers had no accreditation. Unprecedented security measures have been implemented during the auction. The journalists were to follow the trading using monitors in the conference hall.

The auction was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Four bidders were expected to participate. After the meeting of the members of the auction commission, at 4:45 p.m. they announced that there were only two bidders. The first one was Tver-registered Baikal Finance Group, which had submitted its bid on December 16. The other, St. Petersburg-registered Gazpromneft, submitted its bid on December 17. The commission authorized the two companies to participate in the auction. The two bidders, which were granted the authorization of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Intercom and The First Venture Company, have not sent their applications to the Russian Federal Property Fund.

The auction started at 5:12 p.m. The chairman of the commission announced the lot, the starting price for it (RUR247bn, about USD8.82bn), and the bid increment (RUR2.8bn, about USD100m). Baikal Finance Group offered RUR260bn (about USD9.28bn) for the YUKOS’ asset. Gazpromneft representative failed to offer higher price. The chairman announced the winner. Thus, Yuganskneftegaz was sold for about USD9.3, USD500m higher compared to the starting price. After signing necessary documents representatives of Baikal Finance Group left the office of the Russian Federal Property Fund and declined to communicate with mass media. Representatives of the Russian Federal Property Fund said that the winner would hold it own press conference to provide journalists with necessary information. “We are surprised, as you are. We know nothing about this company,” acting head of the Russian Federal Property Fund Yury Petrov announced at a press conference addressing the question about the winner. The legal address of Baikal Finance Group is the only thing known about the company. But there is no office of the company at the site. Earlier the regional branch of Bank MENATEP Spb used the same legal address. But representatives of YUKOS and its major shareholder the MENATEP Group reiterated their decision to abstain from participating in the auction.

The majority of businessmen believe that Gazprom is behind Baikal Finance Group’s acquiring the asset. This step makes it impossible for the US Bankruptcy Court to claim that Gazprom violates its ruling. The daily believes that the struggle for this former YUKOS’ subsidiary will continue, but it will become a secret one after the auction is over. Gazprom is most likely to secure control over Yuganskneftegaz. Baikal Finance Group may decline to pay for Yuganskneftegaz. The company has to make the payment before January 2 (it has to pay USD7.65bn more). The winner may be sold to companies, which are interested in acquiring YUKOS’ assets, for example Gazprom, where the Russian government has a 40-percent stake, and no auction participant is obliged to make a public announcement on such a decision. The major task is to show the transparence of the auction held by the Russian Federal Property Fund, and this target has been achieved.

The second scenario is that Baikal Finance Group fails to pay for the asset and the Russian government acquires Yuganskneftegaz at no cost. In any case, any other auction of Yuganskneftegaz will be a political move rather than commercial one.

The Vedomosti daily also stressed that almost nothing is known about the auction winner. This company is not mentioned at the official web site of the Russian Federal Tax Service. At the same time, a regional office of the Russian State University for the Humanities, earlier headed by YUKOS co-owner Leonid Nevzlin, is located in the three-stored building, where Baikal Finance Group is registered.

The daily also said that Gazprom started looking for new sources for funding the acquirement as it foresaw the possibility of foreign banks’ declining to provide funds after the US Court ruling. Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller held talks with head of China-based CNPC Chen Geng and Citigroup managing director Michael Klein. After the auction Gazprom manager voiced the hypothesis that Surgutneftegaz was behind Baikal Finance Group’s acquiring Yuganskneftegaz, as this was the only company, which had enough funds to pay for the deal. Some officials think the same. And the experts cannot rule out the possibility of the two companies’ forming an alliance for the development of oilfields near the city of Yugansk.

The daily posted experts’ forecasts about the future of YUKOS. Analysts believe that after the sale of the major subsidiary the company’s production and reprocessing will come out of balance. Yuganskneftegaz is forecasted to produce about 50m tons of oil this year. Other YUKOS’ oil producing subsidiaries are supposed to produce 34m tons of oil. However, the beleaguered oil giant plans to reprocess 38m tons of oil. The company could repay it debt if it was granted a respite, but this is the unlikely scenario. The government plans to set up for sale other assets of the company to secure the recovery of overdue taxes.