Analysis: Khodorkovsky in court again

by John C.K. Daly

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once famously described the Soviet Union as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” While Kremlinologists during the Cold War attempted to discern the military intentions of the “Evil Empire,” since 1991 the focus has shifted to attempting to discern the patterns of Moscow’s energy policies.

 

Energy analysts will soon have a chance to sharpen their skills again as a Moscow court has ordered that Mikhail Khodorkovsky be sent to Moscow from a detention center in Siberia to face trial on new charges next month in Moscow’s Khamovnichesky district court.

Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is the former Yukos chief executive and oil tycoon convicted in May 2005 on six of seven charges of embezzlement, tax evasion and fraud. He received a nine-year sentence, which he has been serving in Krasnokamensk in east Siberia’s Chita region near the Chinese border, about 3,000 miles east of Moscow. Khodorkovsky’s former associate Platon Lebedev will also face new charges. Interfax news agency reports that Moscow City Court press secretary Anna Usacheva said, “Preliminary hearings in the new trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have been set for March 3.”