"Documents are being confiscated," Oleg Mitvol said. "This is happening for the first time in the history of the service. Documents from the accounting office are being confiscated by members of the Interior Ministry's anti-organized crime department."
But he said the raid was in line with an investigation that has nothing to do with the service.
The police department refused to comment on the report.
"We neither deny nor confirm information on the documents being confiscated in the Service for the Oversight of Natural Resources," a police source said.
The service has been conducting the official probe into the Sakhalin-II major oil and gas project led by Anglo-Dutch Shell. Mitvol, who is leading investigations, said his expert group has found numerous violation by project operator Sakhalin Energy of conditions set out in the project's feasibility study, including the illegal routing of an oil pipeline through the territory of a national preservation area and environmental damage at Aniva Bay.
He criticized Sakhalin Energy for resorting to political blackmail instead of attempting to correct its mistakes. "What happened was quite a surprise for Sakhalin Energy," he said. "And I have heard of nothing being done except resorting to political pressure from the company's friends inside the country, and no engineering solutions have been found."
The service filed a suit pressing the Natural Resources Ministry to enforce its annulment of the 2003 Sakhalin Environmental Expert Review, a move which can suspend the project for long and put in jeopardy contracted deliveries to Japan, South Korea and the United States, due to start in 2008.
But a Moscow district court refused to consider the agency's lawsuit.
Sakhalin Energy said prior to the revocation of the environmental study that accusations about environmental performance were "deeply misleading," and were "based on a procedural argument relating to the internal workings and mandate of component agencies making up the Ministry of Natural Resources."
