Shareholder of Russian oil giant Yukos faces arrest

MOSCOW -- A Moscow court has issued an arrest warrant for a large shareholder in Russian oil giant Yukos, charging him with complicity in murder and attempted murder, Russian news agencies reported Monday.

The warrant names Leonid Nevzlin, who lives in self-imposed exile in Israel, the reports said.

Nevzlin was granted Israeli citizenship last year, but Israeli authorities said then that citizenship would not automatically shield him from extradition to Russia. Nevzlin also faces a previously issued arrest warrant on charges of tax evasion.

The warrant adds to the already complicated array of legal actions swirling around Russia's largest oil producer. The company faces bills for back taxes totalling $6.7 billion, with additional claims expected and says it could face bankruptcy. Its former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky also is on trial on charges of forgery, fraud and tax evasion.

Nevzlin, whom Forbes magazine says has a net worth of about $2 billion, is charged with ordering the 2002 murder of a husband and wife. A former Yukos security officer, Alexei Pichugin, has been jailed since mid-2003 in the killing.

Nevzlin is also charged with allegedly ordering attempted assassinations of several other people, including the head of the Moscow mayor's communications office, Interfax said.

An attorney for Nevzlin, Dmitri Kharitonov, said his client had been informed of the warrants and "his reaction was sharply negative," the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

Nevzlin was formerly head of the Russian Jewish Congress -- the group once headed by media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, another oligarch who found refuge in Israel. Nevzlin entered Israel on a tourist visa last autumn as legal attacks on Yukos were intensifying.

Russian authorities say the wave of actions against Yukos and its officials are part of an anti-corruption drive, but many analysts see the moves as a Kremlin-led campaign to punish Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, for funding opposition political parties and to stifle his presumed personal political ambitions.