RusEnergy

MOSCOW, May 16 (RIA Novosti) - Neft-Activ, a subsidiary of state-controlled Rosneft oil company, bought Wednesday the latest lot of Yukos non-core assets for 1.8 billion rubles ($70 million). Neft-Aktiv and two other companies were on the bidding list for service and IT assets of the bankrupt oil company. A total of eight bids were made during the auction, which lasted about five minutes. The initial lot price at the 14th Yukos auction was 1.7 billion rubles (about $66 mln), with a bid increment of 16.7 million rubles (over $648,500). At the latest Yukos auction on May 11, an a previously unknown company Prana made a bid that exceeded the starting price by almost five times outstripping its only rival in the auction, Neft-Aktiv, which has already snapped up the bulk of Yukos assets in previous auctions. Prana bought Yukos office and research assets for 100 billion rubles ($3.87 billion). Yukos, whose founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison term in Siberia after being convicted of tax fraud in May 2005, faces a total of 709 billion rubles (about $27.6 billion) in claims from creditors. The previous 13 auctions netted more than 800 billion rubles (over $31bln).