"Today's news suggests that the crisis is over," said Moscow brokerage United Financial Group (UFG), owned partly by German Deutsche Bank AG.
VimpelCom's shares and the wider Russian market slumped in early December on news of the initial back-tax claim, which fuelled fears that authorities were widening their pursuit of private sector riches beyond their campaign against YUKOS.
VimpelCom Chief Executive Alexander Izosimov said there had been a constructive dialogue between the tax authorities and the company. "We are grateful for the active role of several senior government officials," he said in the statement.
VimpelCom's stock closed 5.95 percent higher at $35.78 on the news. "We are happy that the situation ended up like that. I think the market would have been happy even if the claim had been cut to $50 million," said Kosntantin Chernyshov, analyst at URALSib corporation who forecast a 20 percent upside for the stock.
TELECOMS PROBLEMS: Telecoms analysts say the tax woes of VimpelCom, which was created from scratch in 1992, were rooted in its long-standing conflict with the Telecoms Ministry, not the Kremlin.
"VimpelCom initially had more chances to survive than YUKOS and this is what has happened," Chernyshov said.
But in a sign of the business community's fear of the government's ire, VimpelCom said that it would pay the bill although it did not agree with the tax authorities' claims.
It added it was considering whether to appeal some or all provisions of the final claim for 2001.
The bulk of the back-tax claim relates to the treatment of expenses incurred by VimpelCom from an agency relationship with its wholly owned subsidiary KB Impuls. The tax authorities claimed that VimpelCom had offset value added tax of about $9.1 million incorrectly.
"The company plans to pay the value added taxes for 2001 and make offsets of these amounts in later tax years," VimpelCom said.
KB Impuls has held VimpelCom's licence for Moscow since 1997, but early this year the telecommunications ministry said the licence did not allow VimpelCom to provide services in the capital.
VimpelCom plans to complete a merger with KB Impuls early next year. Moscow-based VimpelCom has 23 million users. It posted a net profit of $47 million in 2001 on revenue of $428 million.