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Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly defended the take-over by state oil firm Rosneft of stricken oil major Yukos's key production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, calling it a legitimate business deal. "Rosneft, which is de facto 100 percent state owned, bought Yuganskneftegaz. I think everything was done by market methods," Putin told a news conference on Thursday.
In his most strident defence yet of the Kremlin's seizure of Yukos's prize asset, which pumps a 10th of Russia's oil, Putin said: "Today the state is using absolutely legal and market mechanisms to serve its interests."
Rosneft announced early on Thursday it had bought 100 percent of unknown Baikal Finance Group, the surprise winner of Sunday's auction of Yugansk at a price of $9.4 billion. The purchase effectively nationalised Yugansk.
The Yugansk auction was the culmination of a Kremlin campaign to crush Yukos's politically ambitious principal owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and seize control of strategic sectors of the economy sold off in the chaotic privatisation's of the 1990s.
Khodorkovsky himself is on trial for fraud and tax evasion.
Putin, while not referring to Khodorkovsky by name, said many businessmen had broken the law in order to buy state assets on the cheap after the Soviet Union's collapse.

Copyright Reuters, 2004

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