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Russia Is the Occupied State for Khodorkovsky Mikhail Khodorkovsky regards Russia an occupied state and blames the lack of the nation’s initiative exactly on this occupation, Novaya Gazeta reported with reference to Khodorkovsky’s talk with the lawyers. According to Khodorkovsky, quite a few different thinkers arrived at one and the same conclusion - mentality of the Russians, the relations of people and elite, the place of special services in public life are characteristic not for the country at war but rather for the occupied country. Since the time of Tatar and Mongolian invasion, Khodorkovsky went on, the nation has humbled...

About a year and a half ago, Marina Khodorkovsky, the long-suffering mother of jailed oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said that she had little optimism for her son's fate as long as Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his team remained in power. Mother knows best, as they say. Russian prosecutors are cobbling together more charges against Khodorkovsky, which means the former Yukos chief's jail sentence could yet be beefed up. This will put an end to the politically ambitious tycoon's hopes of release from jail before the 2008 presidential elections. Khodorkovsky was convicted in May 2005 after a trial widely seen...

Today US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack issued the following comments in response to the new charges applied to Mikhail Khodorkovsky: QUESTION: Do you have any comment on Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the charges that were brought against him today? MR. MCCORMACK: As a matter of fact, I do have something right here. I have something prepared on this. Let me read it to you. As we have commented in connection with the original trial, the continued prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the dismantlement of Yukos raise serious questions about the rule of law in Russia. Khodorkovsky and his associate, Platon...

Russian prosecutors brought new charges Monday against the imprisoned founder of the Yukos oil company and one of his business partners, opening a new line of legal attack against a Kremlin opponent. The former executive, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, and his partner, Platon A. Lebedev, were charged with embezzlement and money laundering, which his lawyers said together could carry prison sentences of 15 years. The two men have been held since their arrests in 2003, and are serving eight-year sentences for tax evasion and other charges. Their lawyers said they had potentially qualified for parole late this year, when they would...

Jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is looking at a possible 15-year prison term in connection with a money-laundering inquiry. The prison term would come on top of the eight years he is already serving. Prosecutors on Wednesday questioned Khodorkovsky as part of their inquiry. "Khodorkovsky is suspected of stealing oil revenues from Yukos subsidiary firms and then laundering these funds by donating them to Open Russia," Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Yury Shmidt, said by telephone from the regional capital, Chita.

The Khodorkovsky Connection By ROBERT AMSTERDAM December 26, 2006 In the latest news coming out of Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been transferred within Siberia from a gulag to a pre-trial detention center in Chita for what may be the application of further bogus charges against him. And on Friday, police officials took his father, recently released from hospital, for interrogation. Although you may not have remarked upon it, even before this news, the name of my client had taken on new significance. For his is one of a handful of names to appear recently in two otherwise seemingly unrelated stories...

The Moscow City Court convicted Yukos' former security chief Alexei Pichugin on Thursday of organizing two murders and two attempted murders and sentenced him to 24 years in a prison camp. Pichugin's lawyers will appeal the ruling, which they said was based largely on hearsay and third-hand testimony from a convicted criminal and a dead man. State Prosecutor Kamil Kashayev, who had asked for a life sentence, called the verdict just. But he insisted that Pichugin had been carrying out orders for key Yukos executives, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky's closest lieutenant, Leonid Nevzlin. "No one has the right to take away...

The Moscow City Court is due to hear the verdict Thursday in the politically charged trial of former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin, who stands accused of a series of contract killings, including the 1998 murder of Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov. The case is a key part of the state's efforts to link former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky's chief lieutenant, Leonid Nevzlin, to the killings. State prosecutor Kamil Kashayev has asked the court to hand down a life sentence for Pichugin, who is already serving 20 years in jail after being convicted last year of organizing the double murder of...

A court decision declaring Yukos -- once Russia’s largest oil company -- bankrupt has finally brought to an end the sad story of confrontation between private business and a powerful state. But the ruling also highlighted the unhealthy nature of the country’s raw-materials-based socio-economic system. On August 1, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered the bankruptcy and liquidation of Yukos, a decision that various commentators gloomily described as either a “death sentence” for the company or as its “funeral.” As was widely expected, the court upheld a vote one week earlier by Yukos’s creditors. The latter, led by Russia’s Federal Tax...

Cold hand of KGB haunts oil-rich wasteland By Adrian Blomfield in Nefteyugansk (Filed: 22/06/2006) Even by the desolate standards of Siberia, Nefteyugansk is a forbidding place. Last winter temperatures sank as low as minus 58 Celsius. Summer brings with it a sapping humidity, melting the ice and turning the area into a vast, mosquito-infested swamp. No one in his right mind would want to live in Nefteyugansk. Indeed, until the 1970s, no one apart from the local Khanti people did. Yukos is now owned by Rosneft Yet this stretch of Siberian marsh is now perhaps Russia's most valuable piece of...

Russia’s jailed tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was attacked by another convict, Khodorkovsky’s lawyer announced. A young prisoner with whom the former oligarch and ex-CEO of YUKOS used to share dietary, plank bed and even a place in the lockup, tried to cut off Khodorkovsy’s nose by using a sharp spoon. The lawyers say the convict warmed his way in Khodorkovsky’s confidence to kill him. As to the Federal Prison Service, they don’t doubt it was just an ordinary brawl of two prisoners. The statement of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Yury Schmidt, that his client was attacked early April 14, had a penetrating...

Khodorkovsky put in solitary confinement Big News Network.com Wednesday 25th January, 2006 (UPI) Imprisoned Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been placed in solitary confinement for breaking prison rules, Russia's head of prisons said Wednesday. Federal Prison Service head Yuri Kalinin said the founder of Yukos Oil Co., who is serving an eight-year sentence for tax evasion in a remote Siberian penal colony, was put in solitary confinement for five days when it was discovered that he had documents and items that prisoners are not allowed to keep, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. Khodorkovsky's supporters, in a statement on the...

MOSCOW, December 2 (RIA Novosti) - Prison officials have toughened the rules at the prison where former Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year term, the oil tycoon's lawyer said Friday. "After Khodorkovsky arrived at the prison, there have been repeated inspections, the regime has been toughened, and the atmosphere is tense," Yury Shmidt said, adding that prison regulations contradicted the law. Shmidt said Khodorkovsky, found guilty of fraud, was required as part of the prison regime to knit mittens, although he preferred to do research. "Instead, he is occupying someone else's place, depriving them of the opportunity...

The former Russian tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now in prison in the far reaches of Siberia has learned a hard lesson about where real power exists. He now knows that all the propoganda about capitalists having power is just that propoganda. Perhaps it was his trip to the Siberian prison that taught him that a tycoon's power could never match the power of a government leader with a standing army...

By Major Ron Hamilton (Ret)US Army IntelligenceThe writer retired as a Major and Russian linguist from the U.S Army's Military Intelligence Corps on October 31st 2005 to pursue business and academic goals. He has served worldwide in numerous command and staff positions at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. His interests are the applied effects of foreign policy theory and its implementation on the ground - specifically the transitioning Caucasus nations and the roles that the USA and Russia play in their democratic development.Without taking anything away from the fact that Mr. Sharansky is an honorable man who spent nine...

An imprisoned oligarch will not allow his spirit to be broken by jail, reports our correspondent ONE man is a former Soviet dissident who spent four years in the gulags and fifteen working as a bus driver before becoming an Orthodox priest. The other is a former Communist youth activist who became the richest man in post-Soviet Russia before he fell foul of the Kremlin and was thrown in jail.

The first public statement of Khodorkovsky issued from the penal Colony was published. "Since October 16th, I have been living in the land of Decembrists [December 1825 Russian insurgents against Imperial power], political prisoners and uranium pits. I'm 600 Km [400 miles] away from Chita, 6500 KM [4000 miles] away from Moscow. The Kremlin has tried to completely isolate me from the country and the people; moreover--it tried to exterminate me physically. Therefore, those in power proved themselves once more unable to have an honest and open discussion with me (and to have a straight talk with the real opposition...

Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko, in Washington with top Russian business leaders to rebuild confidence in U.S.-Russia energy ties after the legal onslaught against Yukos, has been caught up in a lawsuit by U.S. shareholders in the shattered oil company. A spokesman for the plaintiffs said Khristenko was served with the lawsuit just after meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush on Monday -- and hours after a speech asserting that Russia was not engaged in renationalizing its oil and gas sector. Twelve shareholders of Yukos American Depositary Receipts filed suit against the Russian government, four state-owned energy giants...

Moscow Police Search Office of Khodorkovsky Lawyer Moscow police have searched the office of Mikhail Khodorkovsky lawyer Anton Drel, local media report. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office refuses to comment on the information, saying it is currently being confirmed. Earlier this month another attorney for the jailed Russian tycoon, Robert Amsterdam, had his Russian visa cancelled and had to return to his native country, Canada. On Sept. 23, a day after Khodorkovsky’s appeal hearing finished, which saw his sentence reduced from nine years to eight, the Prosecutor General’s Office demanded that the nine lawyers on Khodorkovsky’s defense team be stripped...

MOSCOW Sep 28, 2005 — Gazprom, the world's largest natural-gas producer, has agreed to buy a majority stake in the Sibneft oil company for $13.01 billion in a deal that will significantly further the state-controlled company's stature in the oil sector as Russian President Vladimir Putin moves to recapture government influence in the lucrative energy industry. Gazprom, which came under state control in June when the government increased its stake to above 50 percent, has long been groomed as a state energy company to rival Saudi Arabia's Aramco. The companies said an agreement was signed Wednesday between Gazprom and Sibneft's...

Yukos founder 'on hunger strike' From CNN Producer Max Tkachenko Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Posted: 2:40 p.m. EDT (18:40 GMT) MOSCOW, Russia -- Imprisoned Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky has gone on a hunger strike to protest the treatment of his business partner, who is being held in solitary confinement, his lawyer Anton Drel told CNN. Khodorkovsky said he will stop the strike as soon as Platon Lebedev is released from solitary confinement. On May 31, a Russian court found Khodorkovsky and Lebedev guilty of tax evasion and other crimes and sentenced each to nine years in prison. The court...

Jailed Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky has gone on hunger strike over what he sees as the unfair treatment of his ex-business partner. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's wealthiest man, has refused food and water for several days, his lawyer told Russian TV and radio stations. Platon Lebedev was placed in solitary confinement last week for allegedly insulting prison guards. Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in May for fraud and tax evasion. Lebedev was handed the same sentence. The pair are being held at a Moscow detention centre while they appeal against the verdicts. 'Not alone' Speaking to Russian media, Khodorkovsky lawyer...

The Audit Chamber has confirmed that the Federal Treasury transferred $5.3 billion to a state-owned bank on Dec. 30, 2004, the same day that state-owned oil major Rosneft bought rival Yukos' main production unit, the business daily Vedomosti reported Monday. The report is a further indication that Rosneft may have dipped into state coffers to buy the Yuganskneftgaz, the Yukos unit auctioned off to recover a towering tax debt.

MOSCOW. Aug 10 (Interfax) - Jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is ready to take part in the upcoming State Duma by- elections but thinks that he will be barred from running in the poll. "I am absolutely confident that they will not allow me to run. But if I receive letters from people whose opinions are important for me, I will agree, even being aware of the fact that, firstly, they will not let me win the elections, and, secondly, that renewed repression will follow," Khodorkovsky's lawyer Yury Shmidt quoted the former Yukos CEO as saying.

MOSCOW -- A new buzzword has permeated Russian business and politics since former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced on May 31 to nine years in prison for fraud and tax evasion: ''fear." Demonstrators confront it at protest rallies, business people concede it as they move their capital abroad, and opposition politicians draw parallels with the onset of dictator Josef Stalin's Great Terror purges. To many, the conclusion of Khodorkovsky's trial appears to be the beginning, rather than the end, of a chapter in Russian history. Igor Shuvalov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin, called the trial a ''show flogging"...

MOSCOW — When the U.S. law-enforcement agencies repeatedly attempted to imprison Chicago businessman and celebrity Al Capone for bootlegging, racketeering and murder, the charges never stuck. Exasperated with the U.S. government’s attempts to brandish him a crook, Capone decided it was time to fight back. He got himself a media-relations manager and set up a soup kitchen in Chicago. Soon enough he was a news celebrity. Newspaper hacks could not get enough of his lifestyle, his women and his one-liners. But nothing he said during his days ruling streets of Chicago compares to the incredulous cry he let out when...

On a cold afternoon in the winter of 2004, Vladimir Putin summoned his long-serving prime minister to his Kremlin office. "Unfortunately," Putin told him, "I have to fire you." Mikhail Kasyanov was stunned. The Russian president gave no reason for the abrupt dismissal. Facing a national vote on his reelection just two weeks away, Putin had chosen a surprising time to shift governments. As he absorbed the news, Kasyanov assumed he would have to leave after the election. No, Putin corrected the prime minister. "I mean now." The power of paranoia had gripped the Kremlin. For four years, the men...

The Russian “legal system,” which would be funny if it wasn’t so painful, has declared Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty on a dozen or so counts of anti-social behavior. For this, he has been stripped of all assets and will spend the next nine years in jail. Moscow has always been spectacularly obvious about her tolerance for those who rise above the rest. And yet to solely blame the evil Putin would be to underestimate the unbelievable ability of the Russian people to blame the exceptional among them for all ills, and of the West’s unbelievable ability to glaze over the obvious....

The jail sentence for Mikhail Khodorkovsky marks an apparent victory for President Vladimir Putin's campaign to office to wrest control of Russia back from the rich "oligarchs" who had used their wealth to gain political power under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Some still remain, and a new generation of wealthy businessmen has emerged. But they wield far less power than Mr Khodorkovsky - and peers Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, who have since fled the country - once did. And, as several privately admit, the Khodorkovsky case has made them even more reluctant to delve into politics. Chris Weafer, chief...

MOSCOW, June 1 (RIA Novosti) - Only 4% of Russian people believe that former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky is not guilty at all, Russia's Public Opinion Center says. Dmitry Polikanov, the deputy director general of the center, told the Mayak radio station that 26% of the pollees said the sentence on the Khodorkovsky case was absolutely adequate, and 11% found the sentence too soft. Eight percent of respondents said the former Yukos chief was guilty but the sentence was too tough. The majority of Russians, 53%, have no clear opinion of the Khodorkovsky case. A total of 25% said they...

Khodorkovsky sentence hurts Russia's reputation - U.S. embassy MOSCOW. May 31 (Interfax) - The U.S. government plans to give detailed consideration to the sentence against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow told Interfax on Tuesday. The United States understands the sentence is a rather complex document and Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have the right to appeal, the spokesman said. A variety of aspects of the Yukos affair, among them reversible tax claims, frozen accounts that could not be used to pay taxes, and dubious auctions have raised a...

Khodorkovsky an Allegory of Modern Russia By JIM HEINTZ Associated Press Writer Mikhail Khodorkovsky's path took him through most of the extremes of Russia's recent history: from Young Communist to boyish capitalist, from wheeler-dealer to reformer - and from the pinnacle of wealth on top of a huge oil empire to the depths of a decaying jail. That path now takes the fallen tycoon to the prison camp where a court on Tuesday sentenced him to spend the next 7 1/2 years. Khodorkovsky already has been in jail since his October 2003 arrest, and that time was discounted from his...

MOSCOW: A court declared oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty of an array of charges Tuesday including fraud and tax evasion, and sentenced him to nine years in prison minus time served. The declaration of guilt and sentence came in the 12th day of the laborious verdict-reading process in the most closely watched trial of post-Soviet Russia, and one that has been widely criticized as politically motivated. Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil company and once estimated to be Russia's richest man, has already spent 583 days in jail, meaning he would serve about another seven and a half...

Speaking outside the courtroom, lawyer Konstantin Rifkin repeated the defense team's complaint that the judges had largely ignored the evidence it presented. "The evidence of witnesses is cited very selectively -- what fits with what the prosecution is saying goes into the verdict while there is complete silence on explanations or conclusions that favor our clients," Rifkin said. Judges read the verdict in oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's politically charged trial for a ninth day Thursday, going over details of tax evasion charges. Defense lawyers agree that what the judges have read so far guarantees that the court will find their...

MOSCOW : Boredom and farce have enveloped the trial of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but amid yawns inside court and scuffles outside, judges this week are crawling toward the finale of a trial that will leave a massive imprint on Russian politics. Throughout the 11-month tax evasion and fraud trial, critics have accused the Moscow court of framing Russia's former richest man to make a guilty verdict inevitable. Now, following an entire first week of verdict hearings, everyone simply wants to know when there will be a decision. Lawyers predict the end of this week at the earliest, but possibly...

Yukos verdict drags into Thursday The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia and the former boss of oil company Yukos, has been adjourned until Thursday. Earlier, Russian judges read aloud their lengthy ruling in the trial for tax evasion and fraud. A final verdict on the seven counts may come on Thursday but observers say the hearing is likely to drag on for days. Emotions have been running high as one defence lawyer called the trial an "act of reprisal". There have been daily protests outside the court. Stacked odds Mr Khodorkovsky is widely predicted to...

MOSCOW - It had the beginnings of a classic courtroom drama: Russian special forces storming the private jet of one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country; an 800-page indictment outlining charges of massive tax evasion and fraud; allegations of political persecution ordered from the highest reaches of the Kremlin. But as the trial of the Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky crept forward over the last 10 months, it became clear his story was lacking the most important element of any drama: suspense. When the trial's judge, Irina Kolesnikova, hands down her verdict on Wednesday, no one,...

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Final Statement MosNews Mikhail Khodorkovsky made his closing statement on Monday to the court where he is standing trial for tax evasion and fraud. The court will announce its verdict on April 27. Your Honor, Honorable Court, and Respected Audience! I am a patriot of Russia, and for that reason I am watching everything that is happening with Yukos, my partners, and myself personally, with Russia’s interests and values in mind above all else. Let’s remember how this all started. Almost two years ago, my friend Lebedev was arrested in the hospital. I stayed in Russia after Platon’s...

In an impassioned and at times emotional appeal, Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Monday closed his defense with a 39-minute address to the court that left his relatives, lawyers and even reporters applauding and some supporters wiping away tears. The verdict for Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev is to be delivered at noon on April 27, Judge Irina Kolesnikova said after Khodorkovsky's speech was over. Both men face up to 10 years in prison, the maximum sentence demanded by prosecutors on charges of fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion. Addressing the court from the defendants' cage he has shared for the...

It is difficult not to feel sympathy for a man confined to Russia's grim prison system, yet the letter by Mikhail Khodorkovsky printed by Vedomosit and The Moscow Times in December as neither a plea for leniency nor an acknowledgement of past errors. Instead, Khodorkovsky's letter constitutes a broad-brush condemnation of the political direction of Russia, by implication justifying the disastrous abuses of and by the Russian state during the late Yeltsin years when Khodorkovsky and his ilk held absolute power. Memories can be short, and a reply is called for. Khodorkovsky rails against the rapacious bureaucracy, predicting that the...

MOSCOW – In his harshest criticism of the Kremlin to date, jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky accused the Russian government of stealing his Yukos oil empire and warned in a letter published Tuesday that an ongoing crackdown on post-Soviet freedoms will ruin the country. Writing from prison, where he has been for more than 14 months, Khodorkovsky said the sale of Yukos' main production unit into state hands this month "was the most senseless and destructive event in the economic sphere since President Vladimir Putin has taken helm." "Using selective justice, introducing new legal norms and applying them retroactively," the state...

...After NTV fell to the Kremlin, many journalists censored themselves. Regional governors hailed Monday's constitutional overhaul, well aware that their welfare (financial as much as political) depends on Mr. Putin now.... The passive response to Mr. Putin's restoration makes many people pessimistic about Russian civil society.... A rise in capital flight suggests anxiety about the direction of Kremlin policy. Exchange kiosks reported heavy buying of dollars, the safe currency, after Mr. Putin's speech Monday. Repealing the Yeltsin-era decentralization, which managed to keep Russia unified after 1991, will certainly invite problems in months to come from frustrated regions far from Moscow...

...It should be clear by now that the Russian leader will use any pretext to steadily restore one man -- or single party -- rule in Russia. Opposition politicians, businessmen and journalists hounded into silence, or worse, have learned this the hard way.... Assuming (safely) that Mr. Putin gets his way, Russia would do away with freely elected regional governors, the last bastion of power beyond the Kremlin's direct control. Regional assemblies, now in the hands of parties allied with Mr. Putin, will pick governors with Kremlin guidance. Mr. Putin also proposes to cancel the direct vote for half the...

Mikhail Khodorkovsky / Photo:Reuters “I Should Have Left Business 3 Years Ago” Created: 10.09.2004 16:37 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:37 MSK, 19 hours 26 minutes ago Jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky answers questions from readers of www.khodorkovsky.ru. In July-August of this year the Web-site invited questions to the jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky from its readers. Over the past two months the site received hundreds of letters. A list of questions was forwarded to the entrepreneur through his defense team. 1) How is it possible to amass such an enormous fortune — $15 billion — in such a short period of...

Vladimir Putin relishes comparisons with his hero, Peter the Great, who forcibly modernized Russia. But the record and instincts of the Russian president, after four years in power, call to mind a different czar, Nicholas I. ... Political pluralism, strong and independent institutions and a limited and open government are a sign of national strength. Mr. Putin's allergy to all of those is telling. As historian Nicholas Riasanovsky wrote of Nicholas I: "The sovereign's insistence on firmness and stern action was based on fear, not on confidence; his determination concealed a state approaching panic." In his time, Russia missed its...

Russia's richest man has been paraded handcuffed before three judges in an act of ritual humiliation not seen in the country since the communist era. Mikhail Khodorkovsky faces multiple charges of tax evasion and fraud. The oil tycoon, whose personal wealth is estimated at £6 billion, was driven to a Moscow district court in a police van surrounded by armed guards and placed in a cage with his co-defendant and business partner Platon Lebedev. The opening of the trial against Khodorkovsky marked victory for President Valdimir Putin's Kremlin in a four-year war against big business that has seen two of...

Mikhail Khodorkovsky (TRJ) E-Mail this article Comments to Editor Discussion Forum Printer-Friendly Advertisement The spectacle of the trial of two of Russia’s richest men has now begun in Moscow. The charges against Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are serious, laboriously documented and damning. The clumsiness of the Russian prosecutorial, judicial and prison system notwithstanding, the way in which the charges, evidence, and defence testinomy are handled by the court will have long standing ramifications. The Russian and world media, human rights groups, think tanks, foreign embassies, investment institutions, banks with loan exposure to Russia, share-buyers and speculators are all watching...

BERN, Switzerland (AP) - The Swiss Supreme Court on Friday ordered officials to free $1.6 billion US in assets frozen in the Russian investigation of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his associates, a spokesman for a law firm said. In a ruling issued from its offices in Lausanne, the Federal Tribunal disclosed that it had upheld one of a series of appeals against the freezing of the bank accounts, but gave no details. However, Oliver Ciric, a spokesman for the Geneva law firm that handled the appeal, told The Associated Press that the decision unblocks $1.6 billion of the $5...

MOSCOW - After more than seven months behind bars, Russia's richest man, oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, briefly appeared in a Moscow court Friday for the first of two important hearings in a case that threatens to bring down the business empire he built. Before Khodorkovsky's lawyers could introduce a series of court challenges, however, tax inspectors asked for more time to study the case and Judge Irina Kolesnikova postponed the trial until June 8, lawyer Yuri Schmidt said. The closed-door session began a process that could ultimately end not with Khodorkovsky serving more than 10 years in prison and the...

MOSCOW - The Moscow Times published an editorial Friday editorial, which could only have been written by Judas Iscariot. The editorial is a wholesale denunciation of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, demonizing the man as he faces a likely prison sentence if the charges brought against him by Russian prosecutors are proven to be true. Talk about hitting a man when he is down. The editorial comes in the wake of a decade-long relationship between Khodorkovsky's Menatep and Yukos companies and Moscow Times. Moscow Times is published by a former Dutch communist Derk Sauer who came to Russia as a reporter back in...