MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY and business partner Platon Lebedev are no angels. And they make unlikely martyrs for the human rights cause. The 2003 arrest of Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s richest man, head of giant Yukos oil company, with a personal wealth put at $15 billion, left many in a quandary, initially unwilling to see an oligarch as a prisoner of conscience, a man who in the 1990s undoubtedly broke not a few laws to make his fortune during the pillaging of state assets by former officials-turned-entrepreneurs.
Until, friends say, in the wake of Russia’s 1998 economic implosion he became a champion of business transparency and straight-dealing, partly, no doubt, to make Yukos acceptable to foreign investors. More dangerously, he became a powerful supporter and sponsor of democratic causes. He also became an enemy of Vladimir Putin, who made it clear on accession to the presidency that the “robber barons” who dominated the economy and politics of the Yeltsin years could keep their money as long as they kept out of politics. Recently a series of murders of well-known human rights advocates and journalists has gone unsolved, even as critics of the government are selectively prosecuted.
Khodorkovsky was not to be cowed and is now paying the price. On Thursday a Moscow show trial handed down a 14-year sentence to the two men, already serving an eight-year term on tax and fraud charges widely also seen as trumped up. The defendants have now been convicted of being part of an “organised criminal group” that most implausibly stole 350 million tons of oil from their own company between 1998 and 2003. The tonnage exceeds Yukos’s production during the period.
They will not be released until 2017 unless successful on appeal or in the European Court of Human Rights. International courts have already shown signs they are willing to challenge the Russian government’s break-up and bargain basement sell-off of Yukos – one case still pending involves investor claims of up to $100 million.
Or they could be pardoned by president Dmitri Medvedev, an ostensible critic of the “legal nihilism” of the Russian judicial system, part of the reason that Russia ranks 154th in the Transparency International global corruption perception index. A pardon would, however, mean confronting prime minister Vladimir Putin, and proving he is not, as many see him, just a junior, compliant Putin proxy, holding the presidential seat warm for the latter’s likely return in 2012. A resilient Khodorkovsky is not holding his breath.