RussNeft Came to Know about the Past of Benodet Investments.

End of the past week the Police Department of the Tomsk oblast instituted legal proceedings in a criminal case of Cyprus registered oil producing company Benodet Investments Ltd., an affiliate of NK RussNeft OAO. The law enforcement services consider that in 2003 the company exceeded the restriction set on oil extraction and illegally received a profit of 250 million rubles. At RussNeft they point out that in 2003 the company had nothing to do with Benodet Investments.
The Police Department of the Tomsk oblast instituted legal proceedings against Benodet Investments in accordance with part 2 B of Article 171 of Russian Federation’s Criminal Code (Illegal entrepreneurial activity causing detriment to especially great extent). As the Kommersant was told at the press-service of the Police Department of the Tomsk oblast, the action was brought about because in 2003 the company exceeded the quotas set by the license ‘which resulted in deriving a profit of 251.2 million rubles’. And it was not the first case associated with the Cyprus company. In September this year the local police department brought about criminal case against tax evasion to especially great extent by those responsible for organizing and keeping business accounting (point B, part 2, Article 199) at Benodet Investments. At that time a much smaller amount of money was involved. According to the preliminary data of the investigation the loss inflicted to the state covering a time period from January 2002 to December 2003 amounted to 8.84 million rubles.
The Kommersant reference
Benodet Investments have licenses covering 7 oilfields in the Tomsk oblast; they are the Gurarinskoye, Yasnoye, Yuzhno-Tabaganskoye, Solonovskoye, Smolyanskoye, Kulbinskoye and Bolotnoye. According to the records of the subsoil use territorial agency, the total recoverable reserves are estimated as equal to 17.5 million tons of crude oil and 192 million cubic meters of soluble gas.
In the Tomsk oblast RussNeft also owns a number of oilfields with locally registered legal entities of the same name (Duplinskoye OOO, Stolbovoye OOO, Poselkovoye OOO, Grushevoye OOO, Fedyushkinskoye OOO). They were bought by RussNeft in January 2005 from Tomskneftegazgeologia OAO. In mid June 2005 RussNeft bought Tomskaya Neft ZAO which is engaged in developing the Verkhne-Salatnoye  and Yuzhno-Myldzhinskoye oilfields as well as Rechnoye gas condensate field. Their total recoverable reserves come to 8 million tons. 
RussNeft press-secretary Edward Sarkisov has informed the Kommersant that the company refused to make any comments on the movements of the law-enforcement services associated with the time period when Benodet Investments was not part of RussNeft. The point is that RussNeft came into possession of Benodet Investments in the end of 2004. Before that time the oilfields of the company were developed by Tomskneft OAO, an affiliate of Yukos. A source at RussNeft assumed that in the course of acquiring Benodet Investments the attention was paid first of all to production capacities and operational showing of the company. He also thinks that in the first criminal case the claims for more than 8 million rubles will be made against an individual person but not the company, and consequently, it will in no way affect its operation. 
At the Police Department of the Tomsk oblast though they say quite the reverse stating that the claims will be made against a legal entity that is against company Benodet Investments. “The investigation is at its initial stage, and presently it is being decided whether the two criminal cases are to be combined,” pointed out a source at the Police Department. The source also informed that the Police Department is checking up many smaller subsoil users of the region”. 
In February 2005 RussNeft President Mikhail Gutseriev and Governor of the Tomsk oblast Victor Kress signed a cooperation agreement. RussNeft President Mikhail Gutseriev then said that the company had ‘come to the region with serious intentions and for long’. He also expressed the intention of creating ‘a big oil producing complex’ in the Tomsk oblast. In 2005 RussNeft’s investments in the Tomsk affiliates were 710 million rubles, out of which 120 million rubles were addressed to Benodet Investments.
Yesterday Tomsk Governor Victor Kress was cautious when making comments on the present situation. “So far there have been no requests for support on the part of RussNeft,” he pointed out to the Kommersant. “In November we plan to visit the oilfields of all the small subsoil users of the region. And if we see that a company which is not guilty of the debts of former owners, really works well, invests funds and runs its business fairly then we are ready to support it,” said the head of the region.


Nataliya Volosatova, Tomsk