"It feels like we're being toyed with-like a baby seal being batted back and forth by killer whales." Thus one Yukos employee describes the sensation inside the company that was once the alpha whale of the Russian oil industry, but is now gasping to stay afloat under a barrage of legal assaults. This week, while it became clearer that the firm could keep on pumping oil, less happily the tax ministry began looking for tax evasion in 2002 and 2003, to add to the nearly $7 billion it wants in back taxes for the previous two years. Last week prosecutors charged Leonid Nevzlin, one of Yukos's main shareholders, who now lives in Israel, with conspiracy to murder.
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