The witness statement of Yukos’ own in-house lawyer details how the oligarchs paid multi-million dollar sums – estimated at more than $600m by another expert witness – to four Government-appointed directors of Yukos in order to rig the auctions through which the oligarchs gained control of Yukos. Dmitry Gololobov was at Yukos from 1995 to 2004 as Deputy General Counsel and subsequently General Counsel. His evidence was filed into the United States District Court, District of Columbia, on 26 July 2016. It shows:
“The Government-appointed managers had meetings with the Oligarchs in September and October of 1995, when Yukos was still mostly government-owned, and agreed to help the Oligarchs to obtain Yukos without complying with the Investment Program. Secretly, in exchange for the Government-appointed managers’ help, the Oligarchs promised to pay Mr. Muravlenko and his colleagues an extraordinary amount of compensation. In an oral agreement concluded in principle in 1995, the Oligarchs promised to pay 15% of the gross cash proceeds from any sale of Yukos shares held by the Oligarchs – which would ultimately be worth potentially several billion U.S. dollars – to these four individuals. The Oligarchs also paid millions of U.S. dollars to these four individuals through an offshore shell company called Tempo Finance Ltd. based in the British Virgin Islands, as well as other, smaller payments through shell companies based on the Isle of Man called Tisbury Ltd., Laleham Ltd., Status Services Ltd., and Hinchley Ltd.”