Sechin Says Arrested Billionaire’s Sistema Not Blood-Stained

Igor Sechin, Russia’s most powerful oil executive, said the case against billionaire Vladimir Evtushenkov “can’t be compared” with former Yukos Oil Co. owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s prosecution a decade ago.

“Evtushenkov never eliminated his competitors, and that was a practice at Yukos,” Sechin said in an interview last week on a research ship in the Arctic, where OAO Rosneft, the state-run crude producer he heads, just struck oil. “Evtushenkov doesn’t have blood on his hands. And this, at a minimum, is a very important fact.”