Kremlin draws a bead on Vimpelcom

MOSCOW, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Moscow is demanding $160 million in back taxes fines and interest from the nation's No. 2 cellular company.

The claim against OAO Vimpelcom is fueling fears that the Kremlin attack on oil giant OAO Yukos could be spreading to other blue-chip stocks, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Vimpelcom, one of the few Russian companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, plans to contest the claim. News of the tax claim sent its shares down by 22 percent.

"If the state is sanctioning fishing expeditions by the tax authorities on profitable companies and requisitioning some of those profits for the state, it would be nothing short of a catastrophe," said Martin Taylor, manager at Thames River Capital, a London hedge fund that owns stock in Vimpelcom. "It would mean no company in Russia was safe."

The Vimpelcom tax bill could signal that the campaign against Yukos and its founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is expanding to other tycoons who amassed huge fortunes in the 1990s. Vimpelcom's principal shareholder, Alfa Group, is headed by Mikhail Fridman, a billionaire who also is joint shareholder in TNK-BP, a Russian joint venture that includes BP PLC.