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Bashneft privatization case

Sistema’s shares skyrocket 100% in Moscow trade on owner’s release

It was earlier reported that Sistema owner Vladimir Yevtushenkov was released from house arrest and is coming back to work in the company

© Sergei Savostyanov/TASS

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Yevtushenkov’s lawyer confirms his client’s release from house arrest

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. Shares of Russian financial and industrial group Sistema skyrocketed by 100% on the Moscow Exchange on Thursday to 13.22 rubles ($0.22) per share while its market value hit 125.57 billion rubles ($1.88 billion).

It was earlier reported that Sistema owner Vladimir Yevtushenkov was released from house arrest and is coming back to work in the company.

Yevtushenkov was placed under house arrest in early September on charges of legalizing ill-gotten funds received from privatization of Bashneft oil company.

Sistema entered the Bashneft capital in 2005 when it acquired blocking stakes in companies of the fuel and energy sector in the Republic of Bashkortostan in the Urals for $600 million from Bashkir Capital whose owner was Ural Rakhimov, a son of ex-Bashkortostan head Murtaza Rakhimov. His companies participated from the late 1990s in the privatization of the republican fuel and energy sector. The privatization schemes later drew the attention of Russia’s law-enforcement agencies. Ural Rakhimov was put on Russia’s federal wanted list.

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Vladimir Yevtushenkov

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