TNK-BP suspends employees with visa issues
Published: March 26, 2008 at 3:54 PM
Analysts said the move was a sign of pressure on the joint Russian-British oil venture from state-run energy companies Rosneft and Gazprom, the Moscow Times reported Wednesday.
A TNK-BP spokeswoman said the suspensions were due to a "lack of clarity over their current visa status."
The Interfax news agency, citing a government source, claimed "there is no allusion to politics or any sort of 'spy affair' in this whole story, it's purely about following Russian migration law," the Times reported.
Relations with the company and Britain are shaky. On Friday, Russia's Federal Security Service said two TNK-BP employees had been detained for alleged crimes of industrial espionage.
Dmitry Medvedev, chair of Gazprom's board of directors and Russia's President-elect, claimed spying is an ongoing concern.
"There is a problem with this," he said in an interview Tuesday. "These types of organizations are traditionally used for the collection of information," he said referring to the British Council.
In the same interview, he said, ""we can, of course, restore the entire volume of full bilateral cooperation" with Britain.
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