The End Of the Affair

VIKTOR KOROTAYEV/REUTERS

NOWHERE TO HIDE: Yukos owes $3.4 billion in back taxes, fines and penalties for 2000

The slow, painful decline and fall of the Yukos empire entered what seems to be its final act last week, with bailiffs and police combing the firm's offices across Russia, carting away documents, hard drives and anything else they thought could give them a fix on the assets and cash of one of the country's largest and most profitable corporations. "We are not going to destroy the company's operational activities," said Andrei Belyakov, head of the Justice Ministry's bailiff service. "At least, we are not intending to." But many analysts say that Russian authorities are out to do just that. One...

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