The most popular example: former Yukos oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man.
Russia also damaged itself in American eyes by renationalising the Yukos oil company.
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Russia's richest man, Yukos Oil boss Khodorkovsky, was marched off to prison on a conviction for tax evasion and fraud.
Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft, which took over the assets of the Yukos oil company, is still open to lawsuits from Yukos's shareholders.
Yukos Oil has been broken up and sold to Russian state owned energy companies, with the bulk of those assets acquired at a discount by Rosneft, the largest oil company in Russia.
Or the Kremlin may have been alarmed by talk of a deal between Yukos and a big American oil company, after the planned (now cancelled) merger of Yukos with Sibneft, another oil firm controlled by Roman Abramovich, the owner of London's Chelsea Football Club.
So did foreign investment, including a vital deal last year giving a Russian oil producer, Yukos, control of the Mazeikiu oil refinery, Lithuania's biggest export earner.
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In the first trial the defendants were convicted of avoiding taxes on the sale of Yukos's oil.
Yukos produces more oil than it can refine, whereas Sibneft needs crude for its main refinery at Omsk, the biggest and best-equipped in Russia.
Most of the theories about how Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ex-head of Yukos, an oil firm, offended Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, might be applied to Roman Abramovich, too.
In October, Russia's richest oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested and charged with fraud and tax evasion in connection with his running of Yukos, an oil giant.
In April the government said it would let Yukos, an oil company, build a pipeline from the oilfields near Angarsk, said to be as big as Kuwait's, to Daqing in China.
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It did not freeze the assets of Yukos' Sterzhevskiy oil refinery, Caspian Oil Company, or its controlling stake in Mazeikiai Nafta, Lithuania's sole refinery which Russia's biggest oil firm, Lukoil, wants to buy.
And if, alternatively, Menatep were to step in as a guarantor for Yukos's debts, says Adam Landes at Renaissance, the government would only be able to grab Menatep's shares in Yukos if the oil company did go bankrupt.
Nor is Yukos the only Russian oil company under the spotlight for allegedly failing to pay taxes.
And that despite the Russian government's seizure of oil giant Yukos and the imprisonment of its CEO, Mikhail Khodarkovsky .
Meanwhile, Yukos, a Russian oil company, is positioning itself to buy generating capacity, and thus ensure control of its electricity supplies.
What worries Milka Tadic, a well-known local journalist, is what would happen if President Vladimir Putin decided to gobble up Mr Deripaska's Rusal group, just as he did the oil giant Yukos.
But Norilsk Nickel, with the world's largest reserves of the metal, treads in the shadow of rumors that the government is plotting to target it as it did Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil company Yukos.
Two big integrated oil firms, Yukos and Sibneft, said they were calling off a planned merger.
The Kremlin may also have feared a mooted deal between Yukos and a big American oil company.
Two Russian oil companies, Yukos and Sibneft, are to merge, knocking Lukoil from the number-one position in Russia and creating the world's third-largest private oil company in production terms.
This even goes for government debt, which you might have expected to benefit, given that the state's coffers stand to be swollen by all the tax money that Yukos and other big Russian oil companies will be forced to pay.
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Meanwhile, oil prices rose and Yukos, which was pumping 2% of global output, saw its shares rocket.
The final one was the long-running investigation into Yukos, Russia's largest oil company.
The Kremlin broke apart Yukos and seized control of its oil assets.
Lukoil, Russia's biggest oil firm, and Yukos evidently agree.
In 2003 Exxon considered buying a large stake in Yukos, then Russia's largest oil firm.
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