Allied with President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin, Russian oil company OAO Lukoil is at the forefront of Russia's push for economic might. At 16 billion barrels, its oil reserves are the greatest of any publicly traded company. Lukoil, 19 percent owned by ConocoPhillips of Houston, has also been raising its profile in the West, with thousands of Lukoil gas stations in the U.S. and Europe and stock that trades in London.

But an eight-year courtroom fight has helped expose the tangled inner workings of this powerful player on the world energy stage with a history of opaque business deals with its own executives.

Touched off by the sudden 1997 death of oil tycoon Vitaly Schmidt, a multimillionaire with luxury residences in four countries, the fight has involved a struggle for control of his patrimony, hidden in tax havens from the Isle of Man to Panama.

Much of his fortune came from a group of small offshore energy companies he oversaw on behalf of himself and a few fellow Lukoil executives. Among the fallout of the fight over his estate is the exposure of some secrets he knew.

They include the methods by which Lukoil executives, over the years, engaged in lucrative business deals with their own company, via secret trusts and ostensibly independent oil-service firms.

Read the compelling article, reprinted with permission, by Glenn R. Simpson of the Wall Street Journal. The article is in English on the following two pages, or at this link in Russian.

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