Moscow, July 5 (Reuters): Russian oil giant Yukos, its main owner on trial and facing a huge tax bill that could break it, said today that a group of creditor banks had declared it in default on a $1-billion loan.

Many see Yukos’ plight as orchestrated by the Kremlin, unwilling to tolerate the political ambitions of key shareholder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now on trial for fraud and tax evasion.

“On July 2, we received the default notice from the banks which helped us organise the $1-billion loan,” Yukos spokesperson Alexander Shadrin said.

The news pushed Yukos shares sharply lower again, opening down 13 per cent at 180 roubles on Moscow’s MICEX exchange. The shares later recovered slightly to stand a net 9.1 per cent lower by 1055 GMT. Down by about half since April, the shares slumped as much as 17.5 per cent on Friday after Yukos was hit with a second $3.4-billion bill for unpaid taxes, for 2001.

The Yukos default announcement came hard on the heels of an eight hour raid on its Moscow headquarters on Saturday, during which tax police seized documents, computer discs and safes.

The company has until the end of Wednesday to pay $3.4 billion for 2000 tax arrears, something it says it cannot do because the courts have frozen its assets and it does not have enough cash. That means, Yukos argues, it will have to declare bankruptcy. If that is the case, it will be despite recent pledges by President Vladimir Putin that he did not want to destroy Yukos, which accounts for a fifth of Russia’s oil output.

Putin, who easily won a second term in office in March, has a delicate political balancing act to perform with Yukos.

On one hand, most Russians appear happy to see big business — and the billionaire oligarchs who run it — get their come-uppance after snapping up state assets on the cheap from the ruins of the Soviet Union a decade ago.

But, Russia also desperately needs investors and Yukos is a key test for them how far the Kremlin is prepared to meddle in the law and control the business world to get its way.

Bankrupcty at the hands of the Kremlin, some analysts say, could badly damage Russia in the eyes of investors just when Moscow is trying to boost the economy and finally raise the living standards of a mostly impoverished population.

“If Yukos is pushed, or even slips into bankruptcy voluntarily, then investors will see this as Putin’s decision and a direct contradiction to signals given in recent weeks,” said Christopher Weafer, analyst with Alfa Bank.

“This will be very damaging for investment credibility...and will certainly delay investment decisions by strategic investors (Russian and foreign) and put at serious risk Putin’s timetable for economic growth and wealth distribution.”