Russia's Khodorkovsky Convicted Again

by John M. Curtis
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Copyright December 27, 2010
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            Living on fish soup in his Siberian jail cell, 47-year-old Russian billionaire oligarch Mikhail Khordorkovsky showed more defiance and little common sense awaiting new charges for money laundering, after serving an 8-year prison sentence for tax evasion.  Khordorkovsky was one among many young Russian businessmen that jumped on the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s attempt, after the 1989 fall of the Soviet Union, at capitalism.  In the land of Karl Marx, Yeltsin’s plan roiled the Kremlin’s hardcore communists, including former Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, a former old-school KGB agent.  At the time of Khorkorkovsky first conviction for tax evasion where the Kremlin confiscated his oil company, he funded opposition parties and considered a run against Putin for president.  Mikhail’s 2005 conviction an imprisonment wrecked his plans.

            Five years at Siberian hard labor hasn’t cowed the once billionaire and political reformer, lashing out at Putin in Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta.  Calling Putting “pitiful and spiteful,” Mikhail renewed the same feud that landed him with a long prison sentence.  Now slated for release in 2011, his new conviction today for embezzlement and money laundering could land him 14 more years behind bars.  Khordorkovsky continues to buck the system, antagonizing the very powers capable turning him loose.  While he has his supporters, openly protested outside the Moscow courthouse, it’s difficult to fight City Hall.  Instead of sacrificing himself, Mikhail would be far better biting his tongue, showing some restraint and avoiding the kind of political grandstanding that’s likely to antagonize the judge.  Instead of reopening old wounds, Khordorkovsky should show some restraint.

            Khordorvosky thinks highlighting Russia’s backward court system puts pressure on the trial judge to show mercy.  While rank-and-file Russians want more rights, they know the limits of the communist regime where protesters typically disappear and are not heard from again.  Highlighting Russia’s corrupt judicial system encourages a government crackdown, designed to discourage freedom of speech.  Harsh sentences, like in Iran, discourage government protesters, fearing retaliation by authorities.  Sill considered among Russia’s riches men, Khordorkovsky considers himself immune to the kind of kowtowing needed for survival in oppressive states.  Whatever reforms Yeltsin once imagined, the Putin era resurrected the kind of secretive retaliation seen during the now defunct Soviet Union.  No matter how much cash Khodorkovsky has outside Russian, it can’t save him in Siberia.

            Putin called Khodorkovsky a thief who should “sit in jail,” telegraphing to the judge his preference to see Mikhail remain behind bars.  Saying Putin’s “love of dogs is the only sincere, kind feeling breaking through the icy shell of the ‘national symbol’ of the beginning of 2000s,” hurls the kind of insults at Putin bound to get the book thrown at the former Russian oligarch.  Most Russians see the Medvedev government as retaliating against Russia’s richest man.  They don’t like the government’s heavy hand but have little power to reverse the clandestine persecutions and arrests.  Ceremonial protest outside the courthouse do little to change the Kremlin’s heavy-handed approach to anyone deviating from the party line.  Khodorkovsky hopes to put more pressure on Mededev’s government to reform an opaque judicial system with lingering corruption from the old Soviet days

            Khodorkovsky hopes to put international pressure on the Russian judicial system by highlighting what appears as Putin’s vendetta.  Riot police in black helmets and matching truncheons beat back protesters, attesting, if nothing else, to the futility of public dissent.  “This and similar cases have a negative impact on Russians’ reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations and improving its investment climate,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Clinton had no qualms recently calling for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s immediate arrest on bogus sexual assault charges after releasing classified documents, embarrassing Clinton and the State Department for making offensive remarks.  Lecturing foreign governments, especially Russia and China, about human rights’ abuses, calls attention to well-publicized U.S. failures.

            Khodorkovsky doesn’t help his cause criticizing Putin, the current Russian prime minister who could very well run for president again in 2012.  Putin is widely recognized as Russia’s most powerful politician, not its current Presdient Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin protégé.  Convicted of tax evasion in 2005, Khodorkovsky stands accused now by Russian prosecutors of siphoning off $27 billion from his own company during his years as an oligarch.  No one knows for sure what sentence the judge will impose.  Some think Mikhail could get 14 more years at hard labor.  Others think he’ll rot in jail until Putin, should he decide to run, returns in 2012 as Russian president.  No doubt Khodorkovsky enriched himself at Russia’s expense with the full blessings of Yeltsin and anti-Soviet politicians.  If he values his freedom, he’ll stop demonizing Putin and find some way to reimburse the Kremlin.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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