A holder of both Russian and Spanish passports, Valdes Garcia escaped from police who were guarding him allegedly for his own protection during the trial, by locking his guards into his Moscow apartment earlier this month.
"The case against Valdes Garcia has been suspended and the court has ruled to take him into custody," a source said from the courtroom.
Valdes Garcia is accused of involvement in a $13-billion fraud scam as head of Fargoil, a Yukos trading company. He has not yet been put on the wanted list, "but he could be after the case is suspended," the official said.
Neither Valdes Garcia's lawyers nor the Spanish Embassy in Russia were able to comment on his possible whereabouts.
Valdes Garcia arrived in Moscow in 2005 at the request of Russian prosecutors who promised not to arrest him. Security officers met him at the airport and took him to a riot police base near Moscow. Valdes Garcia was forced to remain there until August 2006 when he jumped out of a window and broke his legs.
He was returned under police supervision and tried as a suspect rather than a witness in a money laundering case. Prosecutors sought an 11-year sentence for the Yukos manager.
Russia's Prosecutor General, Yury Chaika, said in mid-January that a criminal investigation had been opened against the policemen who guarded Garcia at his Moscow flat. Chaika also said the businessman "is not a key witness" in the Yukos case.
Valdes Garcia's business partner and former Yukos founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, along with his associate Platon Lebedev, have been serving eight-year sentences in Siberia since 2005 for fraud and tax evasion.
Khodorkovsky, who acquired his company through controversial privatization deals in the 1990s, has insisted his arrest and trial were orchestrated by authorities to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin, and as part of a campaign to bring oil and gas assets under Kremlin control.
