A majority stake in the embattled Russian oil company Yukos' main production unit will be sold at an auction scheduled for Dec. 19, an announcement on the official government newspaper's Web site said Friday, confirming the country's largest oil producer will be broken up as part of a politically charged battle for control over the strategic resource. The announcement from the Federal Property Fund confirmed that that the state will go ahead with a court-ordered sale of a 76.79 percent stake in Yuganskneftegaz against Yukos' multibillion-dollar back-tax debt. Yukos reacted swiftly and angrily, with Chief Executive Steven Theede calling the announcement a "bold demonstration of the contempt the government has for the rule of law." "What we are witnessing is, simply put, a government organized theft to settle a political score," Theede said in a statement posed on the company's Web site. The property fund's statement on the Rossiiskaya Gazeta site said initial bids would be accepted as of Friday and that the starting price would be 246.75 billion rubles (US$8.6 billion, ¤6.6 billion) _ lower even than the most conservative valuation made by a Western investment bank that assessed the unit's worth. --more 1421 Local Time 1121 GMT
