When US businessman Stephen Lynch disclosed that he had bought Yukos’s Dutch subsidiary in a controversial bankruptcy sale last month, the graduate of Wharton Business School and former US Peace Corps volunteer was setting himself up for months of public scrutiny and a mammoth legal fight.

In a series of interviews with the Financial Times, Yukos’s former executives have begun to tell their side of the story surrounding Mr Lynch’s purchase of the former Rosneft unit that won the auction for Yukos’s Dutch subsidiary Yukos Finance BV.