Auctions End on Contentious Note

The government's controversial loans-for-share program came to a contentious close Thursday, when three banks -- including two which have repeatedly won tenders for blue-chip share packets -- walked away with significant chunks of two major oil companies.


The bidding for 51 percent of Sibneft, one of Russia's largest oil companies, was unconventional for a putatively competitive auction: There were two bidders, and the winning bank's bid was guaranteed by the loser, while the losing bank's bid was backed by the winner.


Stolichny Bank Sberezhni, along with the previously unknown Oil Finance Company, won the Sibneft stake for $100.3 million. Their bid was guaranteed by Bank Menatep, which earlier this month through an affiliated company won 78 percent of the oil giant Yukos.


The rivals for Sibneft were a tandem of Menatep and the closed joint-stock company Tonus. Their joint $100.1 million bid was guaranteed by Stolichny Bank.


In Thursday's other auction, Nafta-Moskva, an oil trading Financial Corporation, which is closely affiliated with Uneximbank, competed for the Nafta-Moskva stake. Their joint $20 million bid was also guaranteed by Uneximbank.


In a separate sale not under the loans-for-shares program, the financial consulting group Nikoil won 16.07 percent of LUKoil, Russia's largest oil producer.


The loans-for-shares program which started last month has been plagued by scandal: The list of companies to be auctioned has changed repeatedly and many of the winners of tenders have been close to the companies being auctioned or involved in organizing the auctions. Inkombank, along with Alfa Bank and Bank Rossiisky Kredit, charged that the Yukos auction earlier this month was rigged for the benefit of Menatep, the auction's organizer and winner.


Foreigners were not allowed to participate in the bidding for Sibneft and Nafta-Moskva.


Both Sibneft and Nafta-Moskva are major players in the Russian oil industry.


Sibneft -- the Siberian Oil Company -- is the seventh-largest Russian oil company both in terms of production and reserves. It produces around 22 million tons of crude a year, and its reserves are estimated to be as high as 7 billion barrels. Its main operating company is Noyabrskneftegaz, in the oil-rich western Siberia region, and it has a refinery in the west Siberian city of Omsk.


Nafta-Moskva was formed in July 1994. That same year, it exported 30 million tons of oil, about 30 percent of Russia's total oil exports. In the Sibneft auction, another large Russian bank, Inkombank, was disqualified from participation because it had violated the rules by submitting its application 24 minutes late, State Property Committee Chairman Sergei Belayev told reporters Thursday. A bid by the Samarskaya Metal Company, guaranteed by Inkombank, was also turned down.


An Inkombank official denied the bank had violated the auction's rules.


"Everything was done absolutely right," Sergei Zatsepilov, head of Inkombank's analytical department, said in an interview. "It is just another successful attempt to destroy a real competitor. It is clear that everything was decided beforehand."


Independent observers contacted Thursday agreed with Inkombank that the results of the Sibneft auction seem to have been predetermined.


"It is just a trick to give the block to the previously chosen company," said a Western analyst, who declined to be named. "It is difficult to say now if it is bad or not. We will see results in several months."


"This is a general rule of the Russian business -- first agree and then make a formal trade," said Sergei Pavlenko, head of the government's Working Center for Economic Reform. "The present relative stability of Russia's economy is based on this principle."


Riar Simonyan, director of the Center for Foreign Investment and Privatization, said, "The trouble with the [loans- for-shares program] is that a lot of the deal is under the surface ... And when you know what is happening, you can't say. And when you don't know, you can only speculate."


Under the loans-for-shares program, companies bid for the right to manage state-owned stakes in privatized companies in return for loans to the government. After September of next year, they can sell off the shares. The government repays the loan from the proceeds and the investing companies keep 30 percent of any profit.


The winning bid in Thursday's Sibneft auction was the second Menatep-Stolichny joint effort: The two banks provided guarantees for the Laguna closed joint-stock company, which bought the 78 percent Yukos share.


The Nafta-Moskva auction was actually a repeat of one held earlier this month. The company Evroresursy won the first auction, but the results were invalidated after the authorities ruled the winner could not guarantee the loan.


Alexander Bekker, economic columnist for the newspaper Segodnya, wrote Tuesday that the loans-for-shares scheme was floated by Uneximbank head Vladimir Potanin last March 30, in a government cabinet meeting. According to Bekker, Potanin "dispelled the doubts of the premier [Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin], reporting that the idea ... was already known to [Deputy Prime Minister] Oleg Soskovets and [Deputy Prime Minister] Anatoly Chubais."


According to Bekker, Menatep head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Stolichny Bank chief Alexander Smolensky were present at the meeting.