A Moscow court sanctioned the arrest on Tuesday of Mikhail Gutseriyev, the beleaguered owner of the oil company Russneft, on charges of illegal business activity, in a case echoing the Kremlin’s onslaught against Yukos.
Mr Gutseriyev is thought to have fled the country. He was not present at the hearing and could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this month a Moscow court seized shares in Russneft as collateral for tax-evasion charges. Mr Gutseriyev was forced to stand down as chief executive following what he said was “unprecedented bullying” by the government and back-tax demands totalling $800m (€586m, £399m).
The move mirrored the Russian government’s attack on the Yukos oil empire of the jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Yukos has been bankrupted over $33bn in back-tax demands and its assets taken over by state-run Rosneft.
The speedy growth of Russneft, which Mr Gutseriyev built from scratch from 2002 to form a vertically integrated company producing 300,000 barrels a day, is believed to have attracted the attention of rivals closer to the Kremlin, including Rosneft, as the state tightens its grip on the energy sector.
“This is the same story as with Yukos,” said Alexander Temerko, a former Yukos vice-president now living in exile in London, with a warrant out for his arrest.
“They’ll exile people from the country, issue warrants for their arrest and, in the meantime, they'll take over their property. This is how they started. This is how they’ll continue. It worked.”
Mr Gutseriyev’s whereabouts are not known, but he is said to have been in Russia last week for the funeral in the North Ossetia region of his 21-year-old son Chingiskhan, who was killed in a car accident.
The court seizure of Russneft’s shares snarled a deal in which Mr Gutseriyev was due to sell the company to Oleg Deripaska, a tycoon closer to the Kremlin.
Mr Deripaska’s holding company, Basic Element, had already applied to the federal antitrust agency for approval for the sale. But the agency said the application had been made incorrectly and, days later, the court seized the shares. The deal has been stalled ever since in what some observers say could be a battle over control of the company.
Sources familiar with the industry said Rosneft’s president, Sergei Bogdanchikov, had also been eyeing Russneft as a potential acquisition target. But a Rosneft spokesman said it was not interested in the company.