Ex-Yukos bosses in auction anger

Mr Khodorkovsky is serving an eight year sentence

The former management of Russian oil firm Yukos have condemned the move to auction off the company's assets.

Five Russian oil refineries and 400,000 barrels of daily oil production will be among the assets of Yukos going under the hammer from March.

The receiver values the assets at about $22bn, but Yukos owes the government $26bn in back taxes.

However, the former bosses claim that this tax claim is false and is also politically motivated.

They also say that the assets are being sold for far less than they are worth.

'Trumped-up'

Yukos' top assets include a 20% stake in Gazprom's oil arm Gazprom Neft, 9.4% of Rosneft and two oil production units: Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz.

Russian energy giants Rosneft and Gazprom are expected to be the biggest beneficiaries in the next round of auctions.

Yukos spokeswoman Claire Davidson said that the auctions were "not about maximising value for 'creditors' but about dividing the spoils of a trumped-up expropriation for optimum benefit to state-owned corporations, friends of the government and the Kremlin".

The company says that the tax claims against it are the Kremlin's revenge for the political activities of its former head Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year jail term in Siberia for fraud and tax evasion.

Yukos was once Russia's second biggest oil company, pumping one in every five barrels the country produced.

In 2004, the back tax bill led to Yukos' main Yuganskneftegaz subsidiary being expropriated by the government and sold off at auction.

It was ultimately acquired by the state-owned oil company, Rosneft.