Rosneft, the second-biggest Russian oil producer, is mounting a lavish public relations campaign to win over wary foreign investors before planned flotation on the London and Moscow stock exchanges next month.
With glossy advertising on Russian television, flights on private jets to remote production sites for foreign journalists and an array of Western media communications experts on hand, Rosneft is building the image of an ultra-modern company with a rosy future.
The fully state-owned firm meanwhile plays down the fact that its business success has hinged primarily on a Siberian oil facility taken over from Yukos - once Russia's number one producer - as part of a massive judicial campaign seen as steered by the Kremlin.
"We believe that the issue of the purchase of Yuganskneftegaz is closed," Sergei Bogdanchikov, chief executive of Rosneft, was quoted as saying in an interview with the Kommersant daily on Wednesday.
Rosneft purchased the Yuganskneftegaz facility at the end of 2004 in an opaque financial operation and at a price well below the value of the plant as estimated by independent experts, allowing the company to more than triple production.
Once a relatively small Russian oil company, Rosneft quickly rose in the rankings after the purchase and posted net profits of 4.1 billion dollars (3.3 billion euros) last year. The company pumps out around 1.5 million barrels per day.
Rosneft is now planning to raise some 10 billion dollars (7.9 billion euros) with a share offering in London and Moscow in July in what company executives hope will become one of the biggest initial public offerings (IPOs) ever.
The planned flotation has whet appetites among investors but is also attracting growing controversy because of the company's business background.
US billionaire George Soros, a long-time investor in Russia, has called for the international financial community not to invest in the company on ethical grounds because of Rosneft's role in the destruction of Yukos.
Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer for Yukos' former chief executive, has gone so far as to describe Rosneft's flotation as "the syndication of the Gulag" - a reference to the imprisonment last year in a Siberian labour camp of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky on fraud charges.
Stock market players, such as the British investment fund FandC Asset Management, have also expressed concern because of a drive by Yukos shareholders to recoup losses by seeking compensation from Rosneft.
The head of corporate governance at FandC, Karina Litvack, said: "Unless Rosneft can provide us with credible assurances that it has identified, and made adequate provisions for, any liabilities stemming from the acquisition of its Yuganskneftegaz assets, we wont be interested."
Reporters visiting Rosneft's Purneftegaz oil and gas condensate fields in western Siberia earlier this month were treated to caviar on the company's private jet and chaperoned around the high-tech facility by public relations professionals.
The head of Purneftegaz, Eduard Tropin, 35, who handed out English-language business cards, said that production from the fields would double by 2020 from the current level of about 10 million tonnes of oil and gas condensate per year.
During the visit, Tropin repeatedly urged reporters to be "objective" about the group, asking in a tone that sounded more pleading than exhorting: "So - are you going to report positively about Rosneft for foreign investors?
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