A Dubai-based group made up of members of the Gulf State's Maktoum ruling family has emerged with $10 billion to bail-out for troubled Russian oil giant YUKOS, London's Sunday Times newspaper reported.
The group is fronted by Konsantin Kagalovsky, an associate of YUKOS's largest shareholder and founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky who is on trial for fraud and tax evasion, the newspaper said without citing its sources.
A consortium led by former YUKOS board member Kagalovsky, a former International Monetary Fund chief in Moscow, last month sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin offering to buy out large shareholders including Khodorkovsky.
The government's drive to collect YUKOS's tax debt for 2000, and the plight of founder Khodorkovsky, is widely seen as the Kremlin's retribution for Khodorkovsky's political ambitions.
The tangled process has raised the prospect of dwindling international oil supplies and sent crude prices spiralling higher. Russia is the world's second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia.
The situation has taken several unexpected turns in recent days, raising the spectre of bankruptcy or break-up.
Last week, a financial source told Reuters that YUKOS had no money in its bank accounts after bailiffs seized a total of $900 million by Thursday to put towards payment of the firms huge back tax bill.
On Friday, however, YUKOS scored a tactical victory when a court overturned the seizure of its core oil unit by bailiffs.
The company would face ruin if it lost the oil unit, Yuganskneftegaz. Its day-to-day operations are already threatened by a freeze on its bank accounts.