New trial for jailed Russian tycoon Khodorkovsky

March 02, 2009 04:13:34 PM

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Jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky goes on trial Tuesday facing a new set of charges of financial wrongdoing that could see him staying in jail into old age.

The trial, which Khodorkovsky supporters claim is merely the latest bid by the state to persecute him, comes amid intrigue over the attitude of President Dmitry Medvedev towards Russia's most famous prisoner.

He faces charges of embezzlement and illegal transactions worth 896 billion rubles (25 billion dollars at current exchange rates) carried out between 1998-2003.

If found guilty, he could be sentenced to over 22 years in jail, his lawyers have said. The 45-year old former billionaire was sentenced in 2005 to eight years in jail for fraud and tax evasion.

Khodorkovsky has already been flown into Moscow from the Siberian prison camp where he was serving his sentence and will attend the trial along with his co-defendant, his friend and business partner Platon Lebedev.

The new charges against Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil giant, are "absurd and crazy", his lead trial lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant told AFP.

The fact that the indictment is a tome 3,500 pages long is aimed at "drowning out the most simple fact: That not the slightest shadow of a crime was committed," he added.

But Russia's prosecutor general Yuri Chaika has described the new charges as "particularly grave crimes".

"I am sure that the proof that has been assembled means that there can be no doubt about the guilt of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev," he said in a newspaper interview last month.

Khodorkovsky's critics argue that he is criminally responsible for the methods he used to take advantage of the bargain-price sell-off of Russia's natural resources by the state in the 1990s.

His prolonged detention has never aroused much concern on the part of ordinary Russians, with polls consistently showing that a majority of people have no sympathy with him.

But his supporters and activists have long alleged the arrest was instigated by then president Vladimir Putin and the so-called "Siloviki" group of powerful ex-intelligence agents led by his right-hand-man, Igor Sechin.

The tycoon had irritated the Kremlin by openly funding opposition parties such as the liberal Yabloko faction in the run-up to 2003 parliamentary elections.

Putin handed the presidency over to Medvedev in May but is widely seen to continue pulling the strings in his post as a powerful prime minister, with Sechin as one of his deputies.

There has been talk that Medvedev -- a lawyer by trade who has vowed to end "judicial nihilism" in Russia -- would be prepared to take a softer line than his predecessor in the Kremlin.

A wave of intrigue over Medvedev's attitude to rights was created when he held a surprise Kremlin meeting with the editor of the bitterly critical Novaya Gazeta newspaper after one of its journalists was gunned down in Moscow.

"The result of the trial will give a very clear signal about how power is divided at the very top," said independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, who is also a member of Medvedev's human rights council.

"The trial was initiated by Sechin and the Siloviki. For them, it would show weakness if Khodorkovsky was allowed to leave jail."

Former prime minister and opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov described the new trial as a "legal absurdity", adding that it was an answer for those who had "predicted a thaw and urged support for the new 'liberal' president."

Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin political analyst and ruling party lawmaker Sergei Markov openly acknowledged the authorities' dislike of Khodorkovsky and desire that he stays locked away.

"Khodorkovsky must stay in prison for 1,000 years because he never hid that he wanted to control parliament. He has not gained in wisdom and his money continues to work against the Kremlin," he added.

His fate "will be settled jointly by Putin and Medvedev. A decision in his favour will be a signal of a split within the tandem."