MOSCOW, September 24. /ITAR-TASS/. The board of directors of Russia’s oil company Bashneft has decided to cancel a sale of United Petrochemical Company to multi-industry holing AFK Sistema, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

A source, close to the board, said earlier on Wednesday that the sale of 98% in United Petrochemical Company to Sistema for 6.2 billion rubles (around $160 million) is to be cancelled mainly due to Sistema’s major shareholder Vladimir Yevtushenkov's house arrest. The sale deal was closed in September 2013.

Yevtushenkov was put under house arrest on September 16 under a case of illegal privatization of oil and gas companies of the Bashkortostan republic in the 1990s.