Bankrupt Russian oil firm Yukos, which has been dismantled by the Kremlin amid claims of tax evasion and fraud, has had 10 years of audits from the period between 1994 and 2004 withdrawn by its audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the BBC has reported.
According to the publication, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said that it had decided to withdraw the records as, since making the audits, new evidence had come to light, which has led it to believe that information that Yukos’s management had provided was not accurate, the BBC said.
The breakup of Yukos has not been without controversy. The company, and its former CEO and one-time largest shareholder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence for fraud, have attributed the move to the Kremlin’s attempts to keep Russian energy assets in state hands.
The latest episode in the saga has also been seen by some as being orchestrated by the Kremlin, and the BBC has reported that some industry observers have equated PwC’s decision with recent pressure applied by the Russian government, which saw the firm’s license to practice in Russia come under threat.
Indeed, GML, Yukos’s largest shareholder, has reportedly denounced the decision. I don’t think anyone is going to believe this is anything other than bowing to pressure from the Kremlin, said Tim Osborne, managing director of GML, as quoted by the BBC.
However, PwC, which has recently had its license renewed, has rejected such claims, stating that the decision was purely down to the fact that, PwC now believes information and representations which was provided by Yukos’s former management may not have been accurate, as cited by the BBC.