Igor Sechin and Rosneft finally won the battle over the privatization of the Bashneft oil company – the sale was finalized earlier today. Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree authorizing the sale of Bashneft to Rosneft last week, despite the fact that earlier in July, the Deputy PM Arkady Dvorkovich publicly said the Government had decided to not allow state-owned companies (which Rosneft partly is) to participate in the bidding process.
Earlier this summer, remarking on the possibility of Rosneft participating in Bashneft’s privatization, the assistant to Russia’s President and the former Economic Development Minister, Andrey Belousov, called the idea that a state-owned company might acquire another state-owned company “a stupidity”. Furthermore, in August, Russian media reported that Vladimir Putin had personally declined Sechin’s application for the Bashneft acquisition.
