The founder and chief executive of the largest private equity fund in Russia has said that the fate of Yukos stands entirely at the whim of President Vladimir Putin, but that the Kremlin's objective is to destroy Mikhail Khodorkovsky and not the cash-strapped oil giant.

William Browder, who launched the $1.5 billion Hermitage Fund in 1996, told Times Online that the Kremlin would "offer Yukos the opportunity to co-operate and to follow its line".

A more sympathetic attitude towards Yukos, which has been ordered to pay billions of dollars in back-taxes, was hinted at yesterday when a senior Russian official supported the idea that the company could avoid the disposal of prime assets.

"I hope the company will be able to settle its tax problems before a forced assets sale," Igor Shuvalov, an aide to President Putin, said.

Speaking from his office in Moscow, Mr Browder said that Yukos would be given a choice on its future by the Kremlin but that "only Putin really knows what is going to happen to the company in the long term".

Mr Khodorkovsky, Yukos's former chief executive, was arrested at gunpoint in his private jet on a runway in Siberia a year ago and has remained in his Moscow prison cell since. It is widely thought that the action taken against him for fraud and tax offences was prompted by his support for opposition political parties.

The company he once led as a model of new Russian commercialism moved a step closer to bankruptcy today when a Moscow arbitration court dismissed its appeal against a $200 million bailiff charge for 2001.

The decision heightened speculation over Yukos's Yuganskneftegaz plant, the company's prize asset, which accounts for 60 per cent of the company's oil output. The fate of the plant is seen as key to the future of Yukos and the face of Russia as a place for western corporations to do business.

Yesterday, reports suggested that a proposed firesale of Yuganskneftegaz could be delayed or called off after Yukos said that it would pay off a $3.4 billion tax bill for 2000 within days following the freeing of its assets by Russian tax authorities.

It had been feared that the plant, which was valued at up to $14 billion by Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the investment bank, would be sold for a fraction of its value.

But the situation was mired in confusion today in the absence of confirmation that Yukos had been allowed access to its accounts or any other information on the fate of Yuganskneftegaz.

"The most important piece of information is what we are not hearing," said Mr Browder.

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