It may have been Deepthroat’s sage advice to “follow the money” that led Woodward and Bernstein to take down the Nixon administration, but for those seeking to understand the prolonged crisis plaguing BP with regard to subsidiary TNK-BP in Russia, the better strategy would be to “follow the assets.” So goes the question, cui bono in the TNK-BP collapse? The answer comes back unequivocally (even from some shareholders themselves), the Russian state – with either Rosneft or Gazprom taking over a sizable stake in the company. This is frequently denied by both sides (although less so today), who point simply to seemingly irreconcilable differences between the Russian billionaire shareholders and BP, with whom they split the company 50-50. However, these “differences” are acknowledged to be based upon a disagreement over who should have to give up a stake to the state – because once the Kremlin asks, it seems you cannot say no. Further, the same ones telling us that this is purely a shareholder dispute tend to also argue that the multiple office raids, arrests, and tax cases have nothing to do with it. Yet here is the really, really frustrating part – everyone still wants to pretend that this isn’t a Yukos redux right before our eyes. Perhaps the tipping point is here: TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley has been called in for interrogation on tax invasion by the Interior Ministry, and as a result, the previously diplomatic and quiet BP head Tony Hayward dropped a bomb in today’s Rosneft shareholder meeting, demanding that Russia respect rule of law. Ouch. That sounds more like a creeping expropriation problem than a shareholders’ dispute.