Yukos chiefs flee Russia to avoid arrest

Executives at crisis-hit oil major Yukos have fled Russia to avoid arrest by prosecutors investigating the country's biggest …

Executives at crisis-hit oil major Yukos have fled Russia to avoid arrest by prosecutors investigating the country's biggest oil exporter, the Financial Timeshas reported.

Citing "a person familiar with the situation," the FT said on Thursday all Yukos management board members had left Russia ahead of the Kremlin's planned break-up of the company next month.

Russia is due to sell part of Yukos at auction on December 19 and has put its main owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky on trial for tax evasion and fraud.

The affair has damaged investor conference in Russia and has helped push world oil prices to historic highs.

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"I am not going to sacrifice my life for (Russia's) political purposes," Bruce Misamore, the company's chief financial officer, was quoted as saying in the FT from London.

The newspaper quoted a "person close to Yukos" as saying there was "an atmosphere of terror in the company."

Misamore said he had missed a meeting with the general prosecutor's office and would not return to Russia until he was certain of his "freedom and security."

"I am happy to talk to them for as long as they are seeking answers to their questions and not pursuing another agenda," he told the paper.

The Russian government says Yukos owes billions of dollars in back taxes, but the company says the charges against it are politically driven to punish Khodorkovsky.

Yukos executive Alexei Kurtsin was arrested on charges of embezzlement last Thursday and prosecutors put the company's top lawyer on the wanted list.

Once Russia's largest firm by market capitalization, worth $40 billion (21.3 billion pounds), Yukos is now worth $5 billion.

The FT said it understood Yukos' senior management held a board meeting in London this week.

Russia says it will auction the oil major's main Siberian unit on December 19. Shareholders are due to meet a day later to consider bankruptcy or liquidation.