Loans aid Rosneft's Yukos goals

All Yukos assets must go at auction

Rosneft has amassed a $22bn war chest to buy the remaining assets of Yukos, after securing a string of low-interest loans from several Western banks.

Russia's state-owned oil firm secured $13bn, while its wholly-owned subsidiary RN-Razvitiye had borrowed $9bn, it said.

Five Russian oil refineries will be among the assets of Yukos going under the hammer.

Also up for sale are shares in Rosneft and the oil offshoot of Gazprom.

'Unprecedented'

Banks including Barclays, ABN Amro and Citibank have loaned the money to Rosneft over either 12 or 18 months, with interest rates of between 0.25% and 0.5%.

"The terms and amounts of these loans are unprecedented for a borrower on the Russian market," Rosneft said.

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

"At the moment, Rosneft's business model is imbalanced between upstream and downstream activities. We produce far more oil than we can refine," Rosneft head, Sergei Bogdanchikov said.

"This is why we are interested in possibly buying assets from Yukos."

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

Yukos says the assets are worth more - at least enough to pay off the debts.

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.

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