``Investigators asked us to sanction his arrest and we did it,'' Anna Usachyova, a spokeswoman for Moscow's Tverskoi district court, said by phone today. Gutseriev fled Russia and was put on an international wanted list, said an Interior Ministry official, who declined to be identified because of ministry policy.
Gutseriev quit as Russneft's chief executive officer last month, saying tax officials and prosecutors were pressuring him to sell his company. President Vladimir Putin's government used tax and fraud charges to bankrupt OAO Yukos Oil Co. and jail its CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man.
``The process of renationalization of energy assets is continuing in Russia,'' said Ariel Cohen, a Russia analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. ``It's happening in a brutal style that started with Yukos.''
A spokesman for Gutseriev, who asked not to be identified, said he didn't know where Gutseriev was. He said he couldn't comment on the warrant.
Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, a Kremlin loyalist, last month applied to antitrust authorities to buy Russneft. Deripaska, whose interests range from aluminum to banking, has been tapped by the Kremlin to help develop the Black Sea resort of Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Criminal Investigation
Gutseriev, the former head of state-run oil company Slavneft, founded Russneft in 2002 and built it into the country's seventh- largest crude producer using acquisitions financed in part by the commodity trader Glencore International AG. Forbes magazine in May estimated his fortune at $3 billion.
The Interior Ministry is conducting a criminal investigation of Gutseriev and asked for the warrant, Usachyova said, declining to elaborate. The ministry in May accused Gutseriev of ``illegal entrepreneurship,'' a charge he denied.
Gutseriev said last month he had decided to sell Russneft, citing two years of pressure from tax authorities, prosecutors and the Interior Ministry.
``I was advised to leave the oil business `on good terms,''' Gutseriev said in a letter to Russneft employees published in the newspaper Vedomosti on July 30, which was confirmed by the company. ``Then to make me more amenable, the company was subjected to unprecedented hounding.'' He later denied he was forced to sell.
On July 23, the Moscow Arbitration Court upheld a back tax claim of 3.4 billion rubles ($132 million) by Russia's Federal Tax Service against Russneft. A court froze Russneft's shares this month pending a criminal case against Gutseriev. That ruling didn't affect Deripaska's plans, Sergei Rybak, a spokesman for the billionaire's Basic Element holding, said at the time.
Via: Bloomberg
by Greg Walters and Lucian Kim
