Russia & CIS Business & Financial Daily, 25 July 2008

The harsh criticism by the authorities of the Mechel coal and steel group will not turn into a "second Yukos case" but could lead to problems in understanding between big business and the government, said Andrei Ryabov of the Gorbachev Foundation.

"Likening [Mechel] with the Yukos case would hardly be appropriate. If we talk about some negative implications, I would say there will be high business dissatisfaction, primarily, among big businesses, with too abrupt actions by the supreme executive power branch, as a result of which the biggest company's capitalization is reduced by a third within hours," Ryabov told Interfax on July 25.

For his part, Alexei Makarkin, Vice President at the Center of Political Studies, said that the incident must be settled within Mechel.

Makarkin was also wary of likening the current situation with the Yukos executives. "This is not a Yukos case, there is nothing political here.

This cannot be compared in scale. Mechel is pure economics," he said.

For his part, Dmitry Oreshkin, a political scientist, sees common factors between the Yukos and Mechel stories.

"Certainly, in some sense, this [criticism of Mechel] continues the Yukos story, the logic is the same. Because how was it with Yukos? First they wrote the laws, whereby Yukos, like everyone, optimized taxes - and, by the way, paid $50 per ton, and not $25 like Sibneft - but then they thought it necessary to punish him," Oreshkin told journalists on July 25.

"More or less the same thing is happening to Mechel, and this is symptomatic," he said.

At a meeting on the ferrous industry development on July 24, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized Mechel's price policy.