Did any one else hear Randi Rhodes

[zalinda]

yesterday about the missing $8.8 billion and a story in the (I think) Economist? Using the $8.8 to buy something in Russia. I didn't hear it all because I got a phone call in the midst of it.

zalinda

[gman16]

1. Randi

was talking about a russian oil company that Putin could not take control of and had to find a purchaser for.
It was sold for the same amount of money that happens to be missing in Iraq.

[tech3149]

2. That was Yukos Oil n/t

[Caution]

3. Didn't hear Rhodes but if she was alleging that the missing $$$

from Iraq was used to purchase Yukos, she's basically only got the dollar figure itself to go on. No article I can find in The Economist alleges anything like that. And the figure wasn't even close to exact, it was different by over $600 million dollars.

Additionally, while the companies tax burden was paid off and acquired by a rather shady Russian firm, Yukos is now controlled by the state.

From the article I believe Rhodes was referencing:

<quote>
By freezing the company’s bank accounts and setting impossible deadlines, the tax authorities and courts ensured that Yukos’s tax bills were unpayable. Last December, Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos’s main production arm, was sold in a forced auction to a mysterious firm for $9.4 billion. It subsequently ended up in the hands of Rosneft, a state-owned oil firm.
</quote>

Further on:

<quote>
Foreign investors are also worried. An announcement that new rules would limit foreign companies’ involvement in bidding for big oil and gas exploration licences was not as stringent as first feared. But in April TNK-BP, a joint-venture part-owned by BP, Russia’s biggest outside investor, was presented with a $1 billion tax bill. And this week the Carlyle Group, a leading American private-equity firm, abandoned its plan for a $300m Russian investment fund as too risky.
</quote>

The fate of Yukos is certainly not helping Bush and his cronies right now, in fact the manner in which the entire Yukos affair has gone down is most likely costing them billions. Putin is increasingly autocratic in his control of Russia both from a political and an economic standpoint and that is not good news for those with a stake in the Russian oil industry.