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Moscow - The Russian ruble fell to a record low against the dollar on Friday, breaking through the level of 39 to the dollar for the first time ever.
The dollar exchange rate strengthened by 60 kopecks at 11:30 GMT, to be worth 39.10 rubles, TASS news agency reported. The previous record was set on September 16 of 38.93 rubles.
The ruble has lost nearly a fifth of its value since the beginning of the year.
The euro rate stood at 49.69 rubles at around 13:00 GMT, after earlier this month breaching the psychological limit of 50 rubles per euro for the first time in several months.
The ruble's plunge in value against the dollar came after a Russian court earlier Friday seized shares in Bashneft oil company controlled by the Sistema conglomerate of billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who is being held under house arrest in a money laundering probe.
Shares in Sistema plummeted by more than 20% on the MICEX bourse at the news, prompting a halt in trading for half an hour.
A Moscow court agreed to a request by Russia's prosecutor general's office to seize from "illegal ownership" shares in Bashneft held by Sistema and its subsidiary Sistema-Invest.
Investigators accuse Sistema of buying Bashneft at an artificially low price, a charge which Yevtushenkov denies and his lawyer has called "absurd".
Yevtushenkov's detention has been compared with the case of former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky who spent a decade behind bars and was stripped of his Yukos oil company after openly opposing the Kremlin.
Sistema, a huge group with interests in Russia's biggest mobile operator MTS and a range of other assets, owns about 85% of Bashneft, an oil company based in the Bashkortostan region on the Volga.
Shares in Bashneft fell 7.4% on Friday afternoon, RIA Novosti reported.
