Will Medvedev's Russia tread more lightly on business?

The intense state scrutiny of private oil firm TNK-BP, now facing an environmental review, echoes Putin-era takeovers. The president-elect is reputedly more liberal.

By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 15, 2008 edition

Page 1 of 2

Moscow - Another private oil company, the Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP, is reeling under successive attacks by police and government agencies, in a pattern reminiscent of previous state-sponsored takeovers.

The continuing troubles for Russia's fourth-largest petroleum firm are fueling a debate over whether the imminent change of Kremlin leaders from Vladimir Putin to the reputedly more liberal Dmitri Medvedev holds out hope for genuine reform.

The answer to a key question – the future power dynamic between President-elect Medvedev and his presumed prime minister, Mr. Putin – is expected to come into focus at the ruling United Russia party's ninth conference Tuesday.

On the cusp of this upcoming transition, the case of TNK-BP – which this week faces a state environmental review at its biggest oil field – suggests that little has changed at the top so far.

Over the past five years, about a third of Russia's oil production has been effectively renationalized, often in legally murky ways, and accompanied by baldly partisan actions by state agencies.

Mr. Medvedev, who has been chairman of the state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom since 2001, has raised hopes that this era might be coming to a close.

"Respecting private property should become one of the foundations of state policy," he said in a February speech. And he decried the wave of "raiding," in which private assets are purloined by a few favored businessmen, often with the aid of corrupt police and officials. "As before, the illegal seizure of businesses has a mass scale. I consider it necessary to quickly pass antiraiding laws," he added.

Raids find 'ID cards from the CIA'

Yet the events swirling around TNK-BP strike many observers as part of a Kremlin-sanctioned raid. On March 19, the company's offices were searched by police seeking evidence of tax evasion by a company that was bought out by TNK-BP several years ago. The next day the FSB security service announced that two Russian-American brothers, one a TNK-BP manager, had been charged with industrial espionage. The FSB announced that searches of TNK-BP premises had turned up "ID cards belonging to foreign military organizations and to the CIA." Within days the Interior Ministry forced the company to suspend 148 foreign workers due to visa problems. This week, the Natural Resources Ministry's environmental watchdog is to present its assessment of ecological management at Samotlor, TNK-BP's biggest oil field.

Created five years ago as a 50-50 venture between British Petroleum and three Russian billionaires, TNK-BP has only recently run into troubles. Last year, after the Natural Resources Ministry threatened to revoke its operating license over the Kovytka gas field for alleged environmental abuses, TNK-BP agreed to sell its 63 percent stake in the sprawling Siberian property to Gazprom. The deal has since been bogged down in negotiations, but is expected to be finalized this month.

"The searches of TNK-BP offices and other problems were a signal to the company's shareholders that the deal around Kovytka should be completed quickly," says Natalya Milchakova, an oil and gas analyst for Otkritiye, a Moscow-based brokerage firm. "The message is that TNK-BP should move to sell at a price that Gazprom likes, and not what the shareholders want."

Page 1 | 2 | Next Page