MOSCOW, June 8 (RIA Novosti) - Previously unknown company Prana, which won an auction earlier this month for the headquarters of bankrupt oil firm Yukos, has been granted ownership rights for the building, the Yukos bankruptcy administrator said Friday.
"The buyer has been given the ownership transfer documents and property titles," Nikolai Lashkevich said. "Therefore, the buyer is entitled to exercise its ownership rights in full."
At the May 11 auction for Yukos's high-tech 22-story building in downtown Moscow with 29,000 square meters (87,000 square feet) of floorspace, along with a host of research assets, Prana outbid a subsidiary of state-controlled oil giant Rosneft by raising the initial price by more than 300% to almost $4 billion.
The Russian anti-monopoly service earlier said it would block Prana's deal until its ownership structure was clarified, but on May 28 gave its authorization for Prana to conclude the purchase.
Igor Artemyev, the head of the anti-monopoly service, earlier said that the competition regulator was aware of the ownership structure of Prana, but declined to specify it.
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.
