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So Gorin had no hope of a job at Yukos, still less of help from Pichugin. By now he was compromised, and he ceased to be of any interest to his former patrons in the regional administration. To use a poker term, he was a busted flush. Only for Pichugin, in charge of corporate security in Tambov Region, might he have retained a residual value, and then only as a source of information.
Only the presidential administration could imagine that Gorin would suddenly be so bold as to blackmail the powerful Yukos. A pawn in the hands of others, he was never capable of acting on his own initiative. But he was entirely capable of falling out with his patrons over the stolen money. Not only that, but he knew to whom and how those prestigious flats had been handed out. That knowledge must have been of concern to the thieves in officialdom.
Gorin and the Tambov oil business
The prosecution also told the court that Pichugin and Gorin had been planning to seize control of the Tambovnefteprodukt oil distribution enterprise. That is, they wanted to illegally privatise a state company. The prosecution thus unwittingly confirmed the suspicions of local journalists and detectives: if Gorin really had been killed, it was probably something to do with underhand oil deals.
Neither Gorin nor Pichugin had the economic clout to seize the company that handled the public-sector oil procurements for the entire region. A colossal fraud was discovered in the regional budget in spring of 2002. The money to pay for fuel discounts for the spring sowing campaign had vanished. This left the region virtually unable to sow any crops, and even the Procuracy General took notice.
At this time Gorin was at a loose end and was indeed trying to make some money from shady oil deals, tapping into the fuel discount system for farmers. It's no secret that thefts from the public purse are the main source of income for crooked officials (this is how they pay for their expensive homes and armour-plated limousines).
The method chosen was one of the best-known ways of siphoning off an illegal profit. You buy petroleum products from the producer (in this case the Ryazan oil refinery) at a fixed, low, price. You then funnel them through a series of middlemen (oil traders). At each stage the price goes up but the records only show the official end supplier. This, apparently, was Tambovnefteprodukt. The profit is fatter if you can work with cash and not leave a paper trail.
This, it seems, is what Gorin was trying to do in his final year. But he was unable to get into the Yukos oil supply system. The company that Pichugin looked after was vertically integrated, meaning that its entire technological chain was closed - from pumping oil out of the ground to selling the refined product direct to the consumer. In the two to three years before the events described here, Yukos had invested vast sums in building and refurbishing about 150 filling stations.
For that reason, the prices charged by Yukos businesses were always rather higher. And the petrol at a Yukos forecourt is not cheap. On the other hand, the company had become one of the most transparent businesses in Russia, and its high prices made it unattractive for Gorin's purposes.
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