Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky (Russian: Михаи́л Бори́сович Ходорко́вский; born June 26, 1963) is a Russian businessman, a former Komsomol activist who became one of Russia's oligarchs at a very early age. As of 2004, Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia, and was the 16th wealthiest man in the world, although much of his wealth evaporated because of the collapse in the value of his holding in the Russian petroleum company YUKOS.
On October 25, 2003, Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport by the Russian prosecutor general's office on charges of fraud. Shortly thereafter, on October 31, the government under Vladimir Putin froze shares of Yukos because of tax charges. The Russian Government took further actions against Yukos, leading to a collapse in the share price. It purported to sell a major asset of Yukos in December 2004.
On May 31, 2005, Khodorkovsky was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to nine years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 8 years. A wide variety of international journalists, politicians, and businessmen — both in Russia and internationally — consider this process to be largely political; in 2003, prior to his arrest, Khodorkovsky funded several Russian parties, including Yabloko, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and even, allegedly, the pro-Kremlin United Russia. Many believe that, even though it would have been unnecessary for Kremlin to influence the court directly in order to guarantee a guilty verdict (mainly due to the circumstances of his acquisition of vast sums of money during privatization efforts after the collapse of the Soviet economic system), politics may have played a role in the fact that Khodorkovsky was singled out for prosecution among a dozen of Russia's oligarchs. Kremlin involvement has not been proven, but many dispute the correctness of investigations and court proceedings. Much of the Western media covering the situation tended to side with Khodorkovsky.
In October 2005 he was moved into prison camp number 13 in the city of Krasnokamensk, Zabaykalsky Krai.
In March 2006, Forbes magazine surmised that Khodorkovsky's personal fortune had declined to a fraction of its former level, stating that he "still has somewhere below $500 m".[1]
His story has been used as a pretense for a Advance-fee fraud e-mail.[2]
Khodorkovsky grew up in an ordinary Soviet family, in a two-room apartment in Moscow. The young Khodorkovsky was ambitious. He received excellent grades. He then attempted and succeeded in building a career as a communist functioneer. He became deputy head of Komsomol (the Communist Youth League) at his university, the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology. The Komsomol career was one of the ways to get into the ranks of communist apparatchiks and to achieve the highest possible living standards.[3]
After perestroika started, Khodorkovsky used his connections within the communist structures to gain a foothold in the developing free market. He used the help of some powerful people to start his business activities under the cover of Komsomol. Friendship with another Komsomol leader Alexey Golubovich helped him greatly in his further success, since Golubovich's parents held top positions in the State Bank of the USSR.[3]
With partners from Komsomol, and technically operating under its authority, Khodorkovsky opened his first business in 1986, a private café; an enterprise made possible by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's programme of perestroika and glasnost. In 1987 they opened the "center of science and technology" Menatep (the future bank Menatep). In addition to importing and reselling computers, the "scientific" center was involved in trading a wide range of other products; French brandy, Swiss vodka. It is alleged[4] that these goods were mostly counterfeit: "Swiss" vodka was produced in Poland, and the brandy was not French.
By 1988, he had built an import-export business with a turnover of 80 million rubles a year (about $10 million USD).
Armed with cash from his business operations, Khodorkovsky and his partners used their international connections to obtain a banking licence to create Bank Menatep in 1989. As one of Russia's first privately owned banks, Menatep expanded quickly, by using most of the deposits raised to finance Khodorkovsky's successful import-export operations.
Bank Menatep was also successful in forcing the government to award them the right to manage funds allocated for the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Because of its "exempt status", the bank allegedly might have been an extremely convenient vehicle for the evasion of tax and import duties. By 1990, critics suggest the bank was active in facilitating the large-scale theft of Soviet Treasury funds that went on at the time prior to and following the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
In a prophetic statement of the time, Khodorkovsky is quoted as saying:[3]
Many years later I talked with people and asked them, why didn't you start doing the same thing? Why didn't you go into it? Because any head of an institute had more possibilities than I had, by an order of magnitude. They explained that they had all gone through the period when the same system was allowed. And then, at best, people were unable to succeed in their career and, at worst, found themselves in jail. They were all sure that would be the case this time, and that is why they did not go into it. And I"--Khodorkovsky lets out a big, broad laugh at the memory--"I did not remember this! I was too young! And I went for it.
Khodorkovsky's connections with Komsomol and CPSU structures would prove critical in his success.
Boris Yeltsin's elevation to power in 1991 meant an acceleration of the market reforms started under Gorbachev, which created a dynamic business environment in Russia for entrepreneurs like Khodorkovsky. In fact, market reforms were conducted so rapidly that they in many cases were outright expropriation of national assets. Stocks of the formerly state-owned enterprises were issued, and these new publicly traded companies were quickly handed to the members of Nomenklatura or known criminal bosses. For example, the director of a factory during the Soviet regime would often become the owner of the same enterprise. During the same period, violent criminal groups often took over state enterprises clearing the way by assassinations or extortion. During Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's rule, political corruption of government officials became an everyday rule of life. Under the government's cover, outrageous financial manipulations were performed that enriched the narrow group of individuals at key positions of the business and government mafia. While the manipulations of Khodorkovsky and his partners became well known to the public because of later court proceedings, criminal actions of many others are still kept in secret and are allegedly protected by the government.
Khodorkovsky also privatized the Komsomol property available to him. By then Bank Menatep was a well-developed financial institution by Russian standards and became the first Russian business to issue stock to the public since the Russian Revolution in 1917. The bank grew quickly with a help of N M Rothschild & Sons , winning more and more valuable Government clients such as the Ministry of Finance, the State Taxation Service, the Moscow municipal government and the Russian arms export agency, all of whom deposited their funds with Menatep, which Khodorkovsky mostly used to expand his burgeoning trading empire.
Bank Menatep provided the foundation for Khodorkovsky's bidding for Yukos in 1995 in the controversial Loans-for-shares program. In this manipulation, a small group of individuals well connected to government structures were handed valuable pieces of state property in return for cash "loans" (which in many cases were funded by the bank accounts of the state bank). One purpose of this operation was to help Boris Yeltsin's reelection in 1996. Khodorkovsky paid a small price of 350 million dollars for Yukos, considering that approximately $1.5 billion USD has been spent purchasing the assets that now make up Yukos, with a market capitalisation of $31 billion USD. He claims that the depressed value of the company came from widespread fears that the Communists would win the next legislative election and seize it back.
A higher bid from a group of rivals was ruled out of the process by Menatep on a technicality. Menatep won the auction with a bid for $350 million USD for 78% of the company.
Amoco — later taken over by British Petroleum — was an early partner with Yukos in a highly prospective Siberian oil field Priobskoye. Amoco spent $300 million developing the oil field before being completely squeezed out by Khodorkovsky. In 2003 Priobskoye oil production reached 129 million barrels (20,500,000 m3).
When the Russian ruble collapsed in 1998, Bank Menatep collapsed with it because it had borrowed money in foreign currencies. It lost its banking licence. Three banks, the Standard Bank of South Africa, Japanese Daiwa Bank and German West LB Bank, had lent $266 million to Menatep secured by Yukos shares. Khodorkovsky offered oil instead. They refused and took possession of the shares. They dumped the shares very quickly, collecting less than half of their loan, prompted in a panic sale by Khodorkovsky's public threats of massively diluting their stake with new shares. Yukos also sold shares in its main production subsidiaries to offshore shell companies believed to be linked to Khodorkovsky. Daiwa and West LB, suspecting they would end up with nothing if they persisted, sold out to Standard Bank in mid-1999, which in turn exited Yukos at the end of 2000.
The two deals gave Khodorkovsky, Menatep and Yukos notoriety in Western financial circles. Only in 2003 did it feel sufficiently confident to return to Western banks with loan proposals.
Khodorkovsky is considered one of the first of the Russian tycoons to realise that foreign investment was needed in order to build a global business. His international connections with the world banking families helped him tremendously. In order to attract foreign investment, investors would be motivated by both greed and fear. Khodorkovsky's tough treatment of some of the West's largest and most powerful businesses created a large amount of distrust in most investors. His fellow tycoons had acted similarly, if not more outrageously at times. Coupled with the collapse in the ruble in 1998, very few investors, oil companies or banks were interested in doing business with Russia.
Khodorkovsky introduced unprecedented transparency at Yukos. Having once denied owning any shares in Menatep and Yukos, he confessed his controlling stake. Yukos revealed the identity of its shareholders for the first time, published accounts following GAAP standards, and started paying taxes and issuing large dividends. Khodorkovsky hired many executives from large Western oil companies, placing them in senior roles and appointed respected non-executive directors to the board of directors of Yukos.
Bank Menatep—by this stage rebuilt around its St. Petersburg subsidiary which remained solvent—even started lending money to non-Khodorkovsky businesses. The Bank now claims only 15% of its loans are advanced to Khodorkovsky group businesses.
As his foreign executives and consultants had predicted the effect of the new corporate governance principles was a soaring share price as foreign investors forgave past atrocities and bought into Yukos, which continues to be heavily discounted for sovereign risk.
When rival Alfa Bank was successful in attracting BP to invest billions in its oil subsidiary in 2003 many regarded this as a turning point in Western confidence in investing in Russia. President Putin and Prime Minister Blair both attended the signing ceremony, signalling the growing respectability of business in Russia.
In 2003 Mikhail Khodorkovsky was named Person of the Year by Expert magazine, influential and respected Russian business weekly. He shared the title in 2003 with Roman Abramovich.
Khodorkovsky also became a philanthropist, whose efforts include the provision of internet-training centres for teachers, a forum for the discussion by journalists of reform and democracy, and the establishment of foundations which finance archaeological digs, cultural exchanges and summer camps for children. Khodorkovsky's critics saw this as political posturing, in light of his funding of several political parties ahead of the elections for the State Duma to be held in late 2003.
He is openly critical of what he refers to as 'managed democracy' within Russia. Careful normally not to criticise the elected leadership, he says the military and security services exercise too much authority. He told The Times:
In April 2003, Khodorkovsky announced that Yukos would merge with Sibneft, creating an oil company with reserves equal to those of Western petroleum multinationals. Khodorkovsky has been reported to be negotiating with ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco about them taking a large stake in Yukos. Sibneft was created in 1995, at the suggestion of Boris Berezovsky, comprising some of the most valuable assets of a state-owned oil company. In a controversial auction process, Berezovsky acquired 50% of the company at what most agree was a very low price.
When Berezovsky had a confrontation with Putin, and felt compelled to leave Russia for London (where he was granted asylum) he assigned his shares in Sibneft to Roman Abramovich. Abramovich subsequently agreed to the merger.
With 19.5 billion barrels (3 km³) of oil and gas, the merged entity would have owned the second-largest oil and gas reserves in the world after ExxonMobil and would have been the fourth largest in the world in terms of production, pumping 2.3 million barrels (370,000 m³) of crude a day. However, the merger had been recalled by the shareholders of Sibneft after the arrest of Khodorkovsky.
Some people believe that singling out Khodorkovsky for prosecution is related to his political ambitions. It is also possible that a major motivation for the arrest was Khodorkovsky's meeting with vice-president Dick Cheney to discuss selling a large share of Yukos to American oil companies to make sure that he could pursue politics without having to fear losing his company, because it would now be backed by foreign big oil.
The arrest in early July 2003 of Platon Lebedev, a Khodorkovsky partner and second largest shareholder in Yukos, on suspicion of illegally acquiring a stake in a state-owned fertiliser firm, Apatit, in 1994, was considered by observers a shot across the bows. The arrest was followed by investigations into taxation returns filed by Yukos, and a delay to the antitrust commission's approval for its merger with Sibneft.
The warning was not heeded, as Khodorkovsky continued his involvement in the political process in the lead-up to the presidential elections scheduled for 2004. Khodorkovsky has spoken out in favour of closer ties with the United States, was in favour of the U.S. toppling of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and — paradoxically for an oil man — advocated lower but stable oil prices as being good for Yukos and the world economy. He cultivated close ties with government and business figures in the U.S.
Finally, Khodorkovsky was himself arrested in October 2003, charged with fraud and tax evasion. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office claims Khodorkovsky and his associates cost the state more than $1 billion in lost revenues. Tax evasion, bribery and corruption are widespread in Russian politics and economy. Therefore, Khodorkovsky's supporters claimed that the arrest was politically-motivated and would have a devastating effect on Russia's nascent financial markets.
The spectacular and heavy-handed method of Khodorkovsky's arrest attracted as much attention as the fact he was charged with serious crimes. Many saw it as a sign that President Putin was favouring a very tough approach with prominent business leaders, regardless of how it was perceived by foreign investors. The perceived wisdom of Russian political circles is that tough, decisive leadership wins votes, particularly if exercised against unpopular figures like the tycoons.
Around 5 A.M. on October 23, 2003, Khodorkovsky's private jet landed at Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport in transit to a Yukos refinery production centre in Angarsk, East Siberia. He had been making a series of visits to Yukos and Sibneft properties, which are in some of Russia's most remote territories. Forewarned of his arrival, FSB (the domestic successor of the KGB) agents lay in wait. The plane needed refuelling and had some minor technical problems.
Then two vans with heavily tinted windows drove across the airport. Fifteen masked federal agents wearing FSB issued black combat fatigues leapt out of the vans and stormed the plane. Several dozen more agents armed with assault rifles and pistols surrounded the jet.
Khodorkovsky was in the passenger compartment with several staff members and security guards, who were unarmed, as they were required to hand their weapons to the pilots while on board. He was arrested and immediately flown to Moscow and presented before the Basmanny Court, which ordered his detention pending further investigation and trial.
Subsequent to Khodorkovsky's arrest, Leonid Nevzlin gained a controlling stake in Yukos when Khodorkovsky handed him a 60% share in the holding company that controlled the firm.[5] Nevzlin is himself now wanted in Russia and has since fled to Israel.
Initially news of Khodorkovsky's arrest had a significant effect on the share price of Yukos. The Moscow stock market was closed for the first time ever for an hour in order to assure stable trading as prices collapsed. Russia's currency, the ruble, was also hit as some foreign investors questioned the stability of the Russian market. Media reaction in Moscow was almost universally negative in blanket coverage, some of the more enthusiastic pro-business press discussed the end of capitalism, while even the government-owned press criticised the "absurd" method of Khodorkovsky's arrest.
Yukos moved quickly to replace Khodorkovsky with Russian born U.S. citizen Simon Kukesas. Simon Kukesasan, who became the CEO of Yukos was already an experienced oil executive.
The U.S. State Department said the arrest "raised a number of concerns over the arbitrary use of the judicial system" and was likely to be very damaging to foreign investment in Russia, as it appeared there were "selective" prosecutions occurring against Yukos officials but not against others.
A week after the arrest, the Prosecutor-General froze Khodorkovsky's shares in Yukos to prevent Khodorkovsky from selling his shares although he retains all his rights to vote the shares and to receive dividends.
Due to Khodorkovsky's Jewish ancestry (Khodorkovsky's father is Jewish), claims of antisemitism as the motivation for his arrest were raised. Given Khodorkovsky's prosecution along with that of Gusinskiy and Boris Berezovsky (who also have Jewish ancestry), it was posited that this was merely one of many steps to clear the Russian economy of Jews. However, this assertion of antisemitism has not been supported by the heads of the Federation of Russian Jews and the Russian Jewish Congress, which both defended Khodorkovsky's arrest.. Notably, other Jewish Russian Oligarchs have not suffered similar treatment and have even benefited from Kremlin patronage. For example, Roman Abramovich was appointed by Vladimir Putin for the second term as Governor of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Abramovich was elected Governor of Chukotka in 1999, but suggested that he would not run for the second term. When Russian law was changed so that Governors were appointed directly by the President, he was put in the office nevertheless.
Khodorkovsky's arrest alarmed foreign investors and policymakers alike.
In 2003 Khodorkovsky's shares in Yukos passed to Jacob Rothschild under a deal they concluded prior to Khodorkovsky's arrest. [6][7]
After the court proceedings established that Khodorkovsky had violated the law, his supporters reserved to the following argument: why did they stop him when many other people were speeding? Another line of criticism is probing the real intentions of the prosecutors.
Khodorkovsky's supporters point to the Russian Prosecutor-General's summoning of the Khodorkovsky's lawyer on the lawyer's activities as evidence that Russian authorities are over-zealous, if not corrupt. President Putin denied that he had played an active role in the prosecution, saying that the prosecutors' move showed that no one was above the law. Some also question the impartiality of the Basmanny Court and one of its judges who approved Khodorkovsky's arrest, Andrei Rasnovsky who is a former employee of the Prosecutor-General's office. The Basmanny Court is in the same district as the investigative division of the Prosecutor-General's office, which is the official reason why it is generally the forum for hearing its cases. Some say it is because many of the judges in that court are former employees of the Prosecutor's office and remain loyal to it. One of Yukos' lawyers say there was not even an attempt to conceal their bias, with judges seen in private discussions with prosecutors prior to hearings.
President Putin's chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, regarded as close to former President Yeltsin and to some of the tycoons, disagreed that Putin had no role in the prosecution and tendered his resignation in protest to Khodorkovsky's arrest. The resignation of the pro-business Chief of Staff was said to augur a new era of the domination of military and security services figures within the Kremlin.
Khodorkovsky was not taking the arrest or the prosecution lying down, threatening to bring defamation lawsuits against the Prosecutor-General and his officials, which were not likely to be heard in the Basmanny Court. Those proceedings displayed the resources Khodorkovsky was able to bring to bear to challenge the activities of the prosecution team. The Prosecutor-General is an influential factor throughout the Russian legal system but does not enjoy the same dominance in other courts as he does in the Basmanny Court.
Khodorkovsky supporters believe his conviction and imprisonment grant him the status of a martyr. Irina Khakamada, a former leader of the Union of Right Forces party, claimed that Khodorkovsky's imprisonment was making the once hated oil billionaire into a political hero. She asserted:
| “ | The longer he sits in jail, the more of a political figure he will become. Russians love martyrs. They will forget that he is a tycoon. | ” |
Others pointed to his unpopularity as an insurmountable obstacle to his election.
Prosecutors stated that they operated independently of the government appointed by president Putin. The Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov was appointed by former President Yeltsin and was not seen as being particularly close to Putin, who once tried to remove him. However, he was politically ambitious and prosecuting Russia's most prominent and successful tycoon was perceived as a boost to his political career and intended candidacy for the Duma.
The criminal charges against Khodorkovsky read as follows:
In 1994, while chairman of the board of the Menatep commercial bank in Moscow, M. B. Khodorkovsky created an organized group of individuals with the intention of taking control of the shares in Russian companies during the privatisation process through deceit and in the process of committing this crime managed the activities of this company.
Khodorkovsky was charged with acting illegally in the privatisation process of the former state-owned mining and fertiliser company Apatit. It is alleged that the CEO of Bank Menatep and large shareholder in Yukos Platon Lebedev assisted Khodorkovsky. Lebedev was arrested and charged in July 2003.
According to the prosecution, all four companies that participated in the privatization tender for 20% of Apatit's stock in 1994 were shell companies controlled by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, registered to create an illusion of competitive bidding that was required by the law. One of the shell companies that won that tender (AOZT Volna) was supposed to invest about US$280 million in Apatit during the next year, according to their winning bid. The investment was not made and Apatit sued to return their 20% of stock. At this point, Khodorkovsky et al. had transferred the required sum into Apatit's account at Khodorkovsky's bank Menatep and sent the financial documents to the court, so Apatit's lawsuit was thrown out. The very next day the money was transferred back from Apatit's account to Volna's account. After that the stock was sold off by Volna in small installments to several smaller shell companies, which were, in turn, owned by more Khodorkovsky-owned companies in a complicated web of relationships. Literally dozens of companies were registered for these purposes in Cyprus, Isle of Man, British Virgin Islands, Turks & Caicos and other offshore havens. Volna actually settled the Apatit lawsuit in 2002 by paying $15 million to the privatization authorities, even though it did not own Apatit stock anymore at the time. However, according to the prosecution, that $15 million sum was based on the incorrect valuation which was too low. Allegedly, at the time Apatit was selling off the fertilizers it was producing to multiple Khodorkovsky-owned shell companies below market value, and, therefore, Apatit formally did not have much profit, lowering its valuation. Those shell companies then resold the fertilizer at the market value, generating pure profit for Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and others.
In addition, prosecutors conducted an extensive investigation into Yukos for offences that went beyond the financial and tax-related charges. Reportedly there were three cases of murder and one of attempted murder linked to Yukos, if not Khodorkovsky himself.
One area of interest to the Prosecutor-General included the 1998 assassination of the mayor of Nefteyugansk in the Tyumen region, Vladimir Petukhov. Nefteyugansk was the main centre of oil production within the Yukos empire. Suspicions arose in Nefteyugansk because Petukhov had publicly and frequently campaigned about Yukos' non-payment of local taxes.
President Putin himself commented on this aspect of the investigation while questioned about the investigation into Yukos in September 2003. President Putin said:
The case is about Yukos and the possible links of individuals to murders in the course of the merging and expansion of this company...the privatizations are the least of the reasons for it...in such a case, how can I interfere with prosecutors' work?
The verdict of the trial, repeating the prosecutors' indictments almost verbatim, was 662 pages long. As is customary in Russian trials, the judges read the verdict aloud, beginning on May 16, 2005 and finishing on May 31. Khodorkovsky's lawyers alleged that it was read as slowly as possible to minimize public attention*.[8]
Khodorkovsky was defended by Karinna Moskalenko, who now faces being disbarred by the Russian government for her alleged negligence in defending him. Khodorkovsky denies being dissatisfied with her conduct.
On May 30, 2005, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to 9 years of jail sentence in colony of general regime. At the time, he was detained in Moscow prison Matrosskaya Tishina.
On August 1, 2005, a political essay written by Khodorkovsky in his prison cell, titled "Left Turn", was published in Vedomosti, calling for a return to socialism in Russia. He stated that: "The next Russian administration will have to include the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Motherland Party, or the historical successors to these parties. The left-wing liberals, including Yabloko, Ryzhkov, Khakamada and others should decide whether to join the broad social-democratic coalition or to remain grumpy and without relevance on the political sidelines. In my opinion, they have to join because only the broadest composition of a coalition in which liberal-socialist (social-democratic) views will play the key role can save us from the emergence, in the process of this turn to the left turn, from a new ultra-authoritarian regime. The new Russian authorities will have to address a left-wing agenda and meet an irrepressible demand by the people for justice. This will mean in the first instance the problems of legalizing privatization and restoring paternalistic programs and approaches in several areas."[9]
On August 19, 2005, Khodorkovsky announced that he was on a hunger strike in protest at his friend and associate Platon Lebedev's placement in the punishment cell of the jail. According to Khodorkovsky, Lebedev had Diabetes mellitus and heart conditions, and keeping him in the punishment cell would be equivalent to murder.
On August 31, 2005, he announced that he would run for parliament.[10] This initiative was based on the legal loophole: a convicted felon cannot vote or stand for a parliament, but if his case is lodged with the Court of Appeal he still has all the electoral rights. This "loophole," or alternatively, ordinary provision of appellate procedure, is a common practice in US federal and state court. Usually it requires around a year to get somebody's appeal through the Appeal Court, so it should have been enough time for Khodorkovsky to be elected. To imprison a member of Russian parliament, the parliament should vote for stripping his or her immunity. Thus, he had a hope to escape from his prosecution. But the plans were flawed, as the Court of Appeal unusually took only a couple of weeks to process Khodorkovsky's appeal, reduce his sentence by one year and invalidate any of his electoral plans until the end of his sentence.
As reported on October 20, 2005, Khodorkovsky was delivered to the labor camp YaG-14/10 (Исправительное учреждение общего режима ЯГ-14/10) of the town of Krasnokamensk near Chita.[11] The labor camp is attached to a uranium mining and processing plant and during Soviet times had a reputation as a place from which nobody returned alive. According to news reports, currently the prisoners are not used in uranium mining and have much better chances of survival than in the past.
On April 13, 2006, Khodorkovsky was attacked by a prison mate while he was asleep. It was speculated that a prison mate tried to disfigure his face but not to kill him. Jail sources told reporters that a fellow prisoner known as Kuchma attacked him after a heated conversation. Western media immediately accused the Russian authorities of trying to play down the incident.
On February 5, 2007, new charges of embezzlement and money laundering were brought against both Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.[12] Khodorkovsky's supporters point out that the charges come just months before Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were to become eligible for parole, as well as just a year before the next Russian presidential election.[13]
On January, 28, 2008, Khodorkovsky started a hunger strike [2] to help his associate Vasily Aleksanyan, who is ill and was held in jail and who was denied the necessary medical treatment. Aleksanyan was transferred from a pre-trial prison to an oncological hospital on 8 February 2008,[14] after which Khodorkovsky called off his strike.[15]
In prison, Khodorkovsky announced that he would research for, and prepare, a Ph.D. dissertation on the topic of Russian oil policy.
According to his official site, Khodorkovsky would have been eligible for early release, but an alleged conspiracy involving jail guards and a cell mate resulted in a statement that Mikhail had violated one of the prison rules. The statement was false, but it was sufficient to make Kordorkovsky lose his rights, once the statement was logged in his file.[16]
It is predicted that he might be released by the middle of 2011,[17] although Khodorkovsky is currently awaiting trial on fresh charges of embezzlement and money laundering, which could lead to a new sentence of up to 27 years. He alleged that both cases were instigated by Igor Sechin. “The second as well as the first case were organized by Igor Sechin,” the tycoon claimed in an interview with The Sunday Times from a remand prison in the Siberian city of Chita, 4000 miles east of Moscow.[16]
On August 22, 2008, he was denied parole by Judge Igor Faliliyev, at the Ingodinsky regional court in Chita, Siberia. The basis for this was in part because Khodorkovsky "refused to attend jail sewing classes".[18]