MOSCOW, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- The Russian government may be using a 2-year-old mining accident as an excuse to take over the mining company Uralkali, observers said.
Uralkali stock has plunged 60 percent since the government, in October, reopened an inquiry into a the mining accident, The New York Times reported Monday.
Deputy prime minister Igor Sechin has threatened the company, which made $550 million in the first six months of the year, with "crippling fines," the Times said.
The company was previously absolved of all blame in the accident, in which no one was hurt.
But the involvement of Sechin, who reportedly headed the government effort to take over oil company Yukos, has led some to believe the government is interested in talking over Uralkali.
"He is the state's main raider," said Olga Kryshtanovskaya at the Center for the Study of Elites in Moscow. "He organizes these raider seizures, sometimes to the benefit of the state, or sometimes to the benefit of companies that are friendly to him."
"It seems to us that the authorities simply want to take the company," said Vladimir Smirnoff, a transport driver at the mine. "The authorities just can't watch all that money pass them by."
