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Four companies will bid for Yukos energy assets

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MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - Four companies will bid Tuesday for the energy assets of the now bankrupt oil company Yukos [RTS: YUKO].

Yukos, once Russia's largest oil company, was declared bankrupt August 1, 2006, after three years of litigation with tax authorities over the company's tax arrears.

The fourth round of the Yukos auction will see the companies Finansovoye Agentstvo, Versar, Monte-Valle and Neft-Aktiv bidding for the bankrupt company's energy assets in the Tambov and Belgorod regions in central Russia.

The company Infin Fund Center, which also filed an application, was not allowed to participate in the auction.

The auction will offer a 100% stake in the Energoservisnaya Company, 100% stake in Eskom Energo-Trade, 3.18% interest in Territorial Generating Company No. 4, 25.15% in the Tambov Trunk Grid Company, 25.15% in the Tambov Electricity Sale Company, 25.15% in Tambovenergo, 25% in the Belgorod Trunk Grid Company, 25% in the Belgorod Energy Sales Company, 25.73% in Belgorodenergo, and 25% in Corporate Service Systems, Russia's federal property fund, the auction's organizer, earlier said.

The initial lot price is 2.64 billion rubles (about $102.2 million), with the bid increment of 26.39 million rubles (about $1.02 million). Bidders must deposit 527.79 million rubles (about $20.5 million) for the auction, the fund said.

The first auction held March 27 to sell Yukos's 9.44% stake in state-run oil producer Rosneft was won by Rosneft's subsidiary RN-Razvitiye, which offered 197.84 billion rubles for the lot (about $7.6 billion), compared with the lot's initial price of slightly over 195.5 billion rubles (about $7.5 billion). Only Rosneft and TNK-BP participated in the first auction, the auction commission said earlier.

The second auction held April 4 to sell a 20% stake in Gazprom Neft was won by a subsidiary of Italy's energy company Eni, which offered 151.53 billion rubles ($5.83 billion) compared with the lot's initial price of 144.77 billion rubles (about $5.57 billion). However, the Russian energy giant Gazprom will acquire the second lot of Yukos assets under a call-option agreement signed with leading Italian energy companies Eni and Enel.

The third auction, including Yukos's research and development assets, was called off due to a lack of bids, the federal property fund said.

Yukos, whose founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison term in Siberia after being convicted of fraud in May 2005, faces a total of more than 700 billion rubles (about $26.9 billion) in claims from creditors.

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