Yukos Bosses Flee Russia

The crisis at the Yukos oil company deepened today after all its senior executives fled Russia to avoid arrest.

"All top managers have left the country because of the atmosphere of fear and terror aiming at paralysing the company's activities," a source told Reuters. "The company has been decapitated."

Bruce Misamore, the chief financial officer, has delayed his return to Moscow indefinitely after Russian prosecutors summoned him for questioning. Mr Misamore, a US citizen, is in London along with Steven Theede, the chief executive, and other Yukos managers who attended a company meeting earlier this week.

"I was going to travel back yesterday but had information that there was potential that they could bring charges against me," Mr Misamore told the Associated Press. "Management hasn't abandoned the company - we are tying to find out what the situation is. If there's no issue with respect to being in Moscow in terms of threats of arrest then the management will be in Moscow."

Russian prosecutors have also summoned other Yukos managers for questioning. Over the weekend, the Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified Yukos board member as saying that dozens of Yukos managers in Moscow and across Russia have been targeted in a far-ranging official investigation. The source said that many of them have had their homes searched at night.

Yukos, Russia's biggest oil producer, has been under siege ever since its former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was thrown into jail for funding opposition parties in the run-up to parliamentary elections last year.

Mr Khodorkovsky, who has been imprisoned for over a year, faces criminal charges in connection with the privatisation of a key fertiliser component maker in 1994. The Kremlin has denied that that its assault on Yukos is politically motivated and says the case is an attempt to clean up business practices.

Yukos faces back-tax claims of over $20bn (£10.6bn) and has been forced to sell Yuganskneftgas, its main asset, for as little as $8.6bn - half its estimated minimum value. The legal assault pushed the company's value to less than a tenth of its all-time high of over $40bn.