[Article] Khodorkovsky, explained

"Cell Block Four," Keith Gessen. London Review of Books. 25 Feb. 2010. Here.

A great, comprehensive summary of the complex issues surrounding the Mikhail Khodorkovsky case. As you probably know, Khodorkovsky was the head of one of Russia's largest oil companies, Yukos, and also one of the country's wealthiest men, until he was convicted of tax crimes and sent to a Siberian prison.

Most westerners though, I think, probably associate his name with a sort of anti-Putin martyrdom, and view his fate through the prism of the corrupt Russian legal system. As with most things in Russia, the issue is more complex. Enter Alexei Pichugin, deputy head of security at Khodorkovsky's Yukos.

"In mid-June 2003, investigators arrested Alexei Pichugin, a former KGB major... and charged him with organising the murders of a number of Yukos opponents.

Pichugin was eventually charged with organising five killings, all of people who were somehow in conflict with Yukos/ Menatep: an outspoken mayor of an oil town, a woman with a little tea shop in Moscow in a building that Menatep wanted, the bodyguard of a business rival whose car was blown up (the business rival wasn’t in it), and a man (and his wife) who supposedly helped Pichugin plan the killings but had become too loose-lipped. The order for the killings allegedly came to Pichugin from Leonid Nevzlin, a senior Yukos executive and one of Khodorkovsky’s longtime partners...

Was any of this true? It’s impossible to tell."

Putin has compared Khodorkovsky to Al Capone, noting that Capone was never convicted of a violent crime - they got him on tax evasion - but he was clearly associated with a lot of it. Whether Khodorkovsky was actually connected to those events isn't exactly beside the point, but its a part of the story a lot of outsiders aren't aware of.