Russia's anti-trust body said yesterday it had approved to state oil firm Rosneft's purchase of the obscure buyer of the key production unit of beleaguered Yukos oil company

Russia's anti-trust body said yesterday it had approved to state oil firm Rosneft's purchase of the obscure buyer of the key production unit of beleaguered Yukos oil company. "The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service approved the purchase by state oil company Rosneft of Baikal Finance Group," the service's spokeswoman Irina Kashunina said. "This happened quickly because we have used the data on Baikal Finance Group which was submitted before the auction and data on Rosneft submitted for the Gazprom-Rosneft merger." Baikal Finance Group bought Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos' prize asset, at last Sunday's auction for $9.4 billion. Few people had heard of Baikal Finance Group, which was created days before the auction. Gazprom was widely expected to win the auction for Yugansk but pulled out at the last moment to avoid defying a US court order barring it from taking part. The temporary restraining order was handed down by a Houston bankruptcy court after Yukos last week sought Chapter 11 protection as it labours under $27.5bn in back-tax bills. Gazprom is to be merged with Rosneft by January. The Yugansk sale was the culmination of a Kremlin campaign to crush Yukos' politically ambitious principal owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and seize control of sectors sold off during controversial privatisation of 1990s.