Russia to Seize Bashneft Shares

Russia moved to seize shares in Bashneft from a billionaire businessman on Thursday over what a court said was the oil producer's "improper privatisation", deepening investors' fears that the Kremlin wants to reclaim prized assets.

Moscow's Arbitration Court ruled in favour of prosecutors, who argued that Bashneft was unlawfully privatised in the early 2000s and subsequently sold to conglomerate Sistema in 2009, a Reuters correspondent at the court said.

The judge, Olga Alexandrova said the shares would be moved to Russian property fund Rosimushchestvo.

She said Sistema, which denies the allegations, had a month in which to appeal.

After the ruling, Sistema's shares pared gains and were up 7.3 percent on the day after rising as much as 16 percent. A rise in Bashneft's shares also slowed and they were up 5.3 percent in afternoon trade.

Sistema's shares have lost almost 70 percent of their value since January, losing 318 billion roubles ($7.3 billion) in market capitalisation.

The conglomerate bought Bashneft in 2009 from local authorities for $2.5 billion and quickly increased oil production at the company after employing modern drilling methods.

In a separate case, the owner of oil-to-telecomms conglomerate Sistema and one of Russia's richest men, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, was placed under house arrest on suspicion of money laundering related to the acquisition of Bashneft.

Sistema, which directly owns almost 72 percent of Bashneft's voting rights and has a stake of 86.7 percent, including 12.6 percent which it owns through its subsidiary Sistema-Invest, has denied the allegations.

The case has sparked an outcry in Russia's business community and drawn comparisons to the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and head of now defunct Yukos oil producer. He was jailed on fraud and tax evasion charges after he fell out with President Vladimir Putin.

Reporting by Denis Pinchuk