Russia's highly leveraged state oil firm Rosneft, which is negotiating multi-billion-dollar loans with Western banks, borrowed $1.8 billion from Sberbank state savings bank to help it buy Yugansk, a newspaper said on Friday.
Shedding more light into Rosneft's messy buy of Yugansk, fallen oil major Yukos's main asset, for $9.4 billion in December at three times its equity book value, Vedomosti daily said it had traced the loan to both firms' annual reports.
Rosneft's annual report released this week showed it had borrowed $1.8 billion from Sberbank and also issued promissory notes to the tune of $800 million.
Sberbank by its own account has confirmed lending 24.7 billion roubles at the end of last year against Rosneft promissory notes at an annual interest rate of 8 percent, according to its annual report.
Vedomosti speculated the money was used to fund the Yugansk buy. Rosneft officials were not available for immediate comment.
The latest details add to the murkiness surrounding one of the biggest asset transfers in post-Soviet Russia and raise further questions over Rosneft's secretive finances.
Rosneft ended up with Yugansk after buying Baikal Finance, which was the mystery buyer of the oil producer at the December 19. auction. Until then, nobody had heard of Baikal Finance, a company registered at the address of a foodstore outside Moscow.
The sale of Yugansk, which produces a million barrels of oil a day, marked the climax of a messy battle between Kremlin officials and Yukos owners, two of whom are now in jail. Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in jail in May for fraud and tax evasion, charges his lawyers say were politically motivated and orchestrated by highly placed opponents in the Kremlin.
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