Transpetrol among leftover cabinet business.

(From The Slovak Spectator)

Byline: Beata Balogova Spectator staff

WHEN Slovakia sold a minority stake in the state oil pipeline company Transpetrol to the Russian oil colossus Yukos in 2002 for $74 million, no one imagined that in a few years the country would be having to deal with the disposition of the shares again, and in far more complex circumstances.

The problem began when Yukos crumbled after its founders, the Russian oil tycoons Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, were arrested in 2003 for tax evasion.

The implosion of Yukos has produced so many developments with the Transpetrol stake that their fate has been constantly clouded by …