http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1354827,00.html 衛報 Russian target Abramovich hit by ￡400m tax bill Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow Friday November 19, 2004 The Guardian Chelsea football club's owner, Roman Abramovich, has been hit with a ￡400m tax bill relating to his Russian oil company Sibneft, according to local reports, raising fears that he could be the next oligarch targeted by President Vladimir Putin in the country's crackdown against big business. Mr Abramovich, said to be the second richest man in Russia with a fortune of ￡7.5bn, paid ￡140m for Chelsea last year and embarked on a ￡200m spending spree on top class international footballers. But his strategy of minimising his presence in Russia by investing overseas may only have delayed a government investigation into his finances, analysts said, following President Putin's attack on other oligarchs, most notably Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his oil business Yukos. Russian tax police now say Sibneft owes 21bn roubles (￡396m) in tax from 2000, according to the Interfax news agency, which also quoted a parliamentary source saying the same figure was being sought. Officials and MPs declined to confirm either report. John Mann, a spokesman for Sibneft, refused repeated requests for comment. The report will raise fears that Sibneft may be subjected to a tax crackdown similar to that plaguing Yukos, which, after a series of claims by tax police for each year since 2000, now owes $18bn (￡9.7bn) in back taxes while its former chief executive Mr Khodorkovsky is on trial for fraud. The reports of the tax bill sent Sibneft's shares 8% lower yesterday. Following his investment in Chelsea, Mr Abramovich has been divesting some of his interests in Russia. He recently sold off his remaining stake in the aluminium giant RusAl to another oligarch, Oleg Deripasko. Yet Sibneft, worth an estimated $16bn, has remained his main source of income. His spokesmen have persistently denied that he intends to pull out of Russia. But Liliya Shevtsova, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow, said Mr Abramovich's extravagant lifestyle would leave him open to an attack from the Russian authorities. "The type of power [the Kremlin has] does not tolerate anyone walking alone and becoming part of the landscape in Great Britain," she said. "It was always only a question of when Abramovich and the other oligarchs would come under intense scrutiny. "Mr Chelski does things that look not only ridiculous to the Kremlin and Russians generally, but also provoke deep feelings of dislike." She said she thought further tax bills would follow and that the Kremlin now thought the "oligarchy must be dismantled". The Kremlin's pursuit of the so-called oligarchs - billionaires who amassed huge fortunes buying up state assetson the cheap in the 1990s - has won Mr Putin considerable popular approval. One opinion poll showed only a fifth of Russians disapproved of the arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky, taken to jail at gunpoint on a Siberian runway in October 2003. Since the arrest, the firm has lost ￡3.4bn, had two new CEOs, and now faces the sell-off by Kremlin bailiffs of its main subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz, to cover its expanding tax debts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 死托比 -- RomanAbramovich。JoseMourinho。SteveClarke。PetrCech。LennyPidgeley。 CarloCudicini。RicardoCarvalho。ScottParker。RobertHuth。TiagoMendes。 FilipeOliveira。GlenJohnson。NjitapGeremi。ClaudeMakelele。DamienDuff。 FrankLampard。NunoMorais。DidierDrogba。YvesMakabaMakalamby。 MatejaKezman。AlexeiSmertin。JoeCole。EidurGudjohnsen。WilliamGallas。 ArjenRobben。WayneBridge。PauloFerreira。CelestineBabayaro。JohnTerry。 --

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