Khodorkovsky's Trial and Sentencing

Former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, have been found guilty of corruption charges by the Russian judge who heard the case, his lawyer announced today. This is the second time that Khodorkovsky has received a guilty verdict. The first time was in 2005, when Khodorkovsky was sentenced to eight years in prison for underpaying production taxes on Yukos oil company, the giant Russian oil corporation he built from the ruins of the Soviet era state-owned petroleum industry.

Under Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, Yukos became the world’s second largest petroleum producer, after ExxonMobil.

After the first conviction of Khodorkovsky, Yukos was broken up and sold, most of it falling back into Kremlin control.

In this most recent proceeding, Khodorkovsky and his business partner, were charged with embezzlement and laundering of stolen property, i.e., the oil produced by Yukos.

Russian security forces maintained tight control outside the courthouse today, where hundreds of Khodorkovsky supporters gathered in the sub-zero weather in anticipation of the verdict. They chanted "Freedom" and "Russia without Putin."

Before his legal troubles began, Khodorkovsky had expressed the desire to run for public office and he had funded several opposition political parties, supposedly including one supported by the Kremlin.

In October, prosecutors demanded a fourteen-year prison sentence but said it should include Khodorkovsky’s current eight-year term, which will end in October 2011. Counting the first term, today’s sentence of Khodorkovsky could keep him in prison until 2017.

The former oil magnate had been incarcerated in a work camp near Krasnokamensk, 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) away from his native Moscow, but when the new charges were levied against the two men, they were moved to Moscow in 2009 to stand trial.

The court also ordered Khodorkovsky and Lebedev to pay about $600 million in back taxes.

There is little doubt that Khodorkovsky's prosecution has a meaning far beyond his own innocence or guilt. Critics say Khodorkovsky’s trials are a test of the Kremlin’s willingness to allow Russia to be governed by rule of law.

During the trial, Khodorkovsky, himself, said, "There is much more than just the fates of two people in your hands. Right here and right now, the fate of every citizen of our country is being decided....For me, as for anybody, it is hard to live in jail, and I do not want to die there. But if I have to, I will not hesitate. The things I believe in are worth dying for," he said.

"This verdict will be a verdict on whether Russia is a law-governed state, or whether it ever can become one," said Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Endowment, "because currently it is not a law-governed state and the trial of Khodorkovsky and his partner Lebedev is the most striking example of it."

Analysts say that Russia’s commitment to the rule of law is on trial. Former president and present prime minister Putin, and current President Medvedev, have stated their desire to reform the Russian court system that has often been marred by corruption and political dealings.
The Khodorkovsky trial is likely to mark current President Medvedev as a man of principle with independent political power, if he shows leniency, or as a convenience for Putin if he does not.

Khodorkovsky angered Putin long ago when he began to support political parties and to champion causes that the Kremlin would have preferred to keep quiet. The two men are, in a sense, rivals for the future of Russia, and so it is likely that Putin will keep Khodorkovsky imprisoned for as long as possible.

Khodorkovsky is one of the Russian oligarchs, who overpowered and took control of Russian industrial treasures in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Khodorkovsky could have taken his share of the wealth available to the oligarchs and quietly supported Putin, as the others have done. His path, however, diverted because of his interest in politics.
One of Khodorkovsky’s partners in the early consolidation of Yukos was Boris Berezovsky, who has sought and obtained political asylum in Britain.

Another of Khodorkovsky’s partners, Roman Abramovich, has remained on good terms with Putin, although he, too, spends much of his time in Britain and is considered to be one of Russia’s wealthiest men, not only because of his profits from Yukos but also from his other activities in Russian industry. Abramovich now owns the Chelsea football club in London.