Parties involved in the Yukos chapter 11 case on Monday were attempting to discover information regarding Baikal Finance Group, which was the obscure winner of Sunday’s Russian government auction of the Yukos oil unit Yuganskneftegaz (“Yugansk”). Several news services reported late Monday that at least two representatives of Baikal are employees of Siberian-based oil and gas major, OAO Surgutneftegaz. Although Surgutneftegaz announced after the Sunday auction that it had no ties to Baikal Finance, speculation is increasing that Surgutneftegaz is providing or backing financing in some manner for Baikal Finance.
Here is the Wall Street Journal’s ($) more thorough coverage of the aftermath of the Russian government’s auction of the Yukos oil and gas production unit.
Meanwhile, in this op-ed in today’s Journal, former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov pulls no purches regarding the implications from Western acceptance of the Russian government’s handling of Yukos:

If the West won’t stand up for basic human rights and democratic principles in Russia, one last hope was that it would come to the aid of free enterprise. But the only voice of protest against this weekend’s auction of Russian oil giant Yukos’s main asset came from Texas, and it wasn’t George W. Bush — it was a bankruptcy court in Houston. Needless to say, the auction of Yuganskneftegaz went forward on Sunday in Moscow despite the court order.
With the Russian state gas company Gazprom in a potential legal tangle over the injunction, the auction was won by a completely unknown entity from the Russian hinterlands that just happened to have $9.3 billion cash on hand. This company will soon prove to be the outer layer of a Russian matryoshka doll. We’ll find a Gazprom doll inside of that one and, like every matrioshka today, at the center will be Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Kasparov concludes with the following insight:

Perhaps Western leaders agree with last week’s New York Times editorial that made the stunning assertion that “a fascist Russia is a much better thing than a Communist Russia.” I hope I am allowed to order something not on that menu. I am not ready to throw up my hands and surrender to the Putin dictatorship. It is still possible to stand up to the dictator and to fight for democracy.
In March, 1991, then-President George H.W. Bush and his European counterparts were still supporting Mikhail Gorbachev’s futile domestic endeavors. I wrote then that if we were left alone we would soon have no Gorbachev and no communism. Now we need to say no to Vladimir Putin and no to fascism. If the United States and the European powers are not willing to help us in this new fight, at the very least they should stay out of the battle and stop giving aid to the forces of fascism.