Former billionaire oligarch and government critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky went on trial for a second time in Moscow on Tuesday in a case seen as a test of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his promise to end the country’s “legal nihilism.”
Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon who fell foul of former Russian president Vladimir Putin — who is now prime minister — and was jailed in Siberia for tax evasion, faces charges of money laundering and embezzlement. He is accused this time of stealing US$25 billion.
His supporters claim the case is a political attempt by the Kremlin to keep Khodorkovsky in prison. The tycoon, once Russia’s richest man, was jailed for eight years in 2005.
Khodorkovsky made his first public appearance in Moscow since 2005 after being flown in last week from his Siberian prison. Looking tired and older, but in apparent good spirits, he smiled and joked with his business partner Platon Lebedev, who is also on trial.
Yesterday’s preliminary proceedings were held in secret. Reporters were allowed into the building to watch the trial on three TV screens downstairs, but court officials switched the monitors off seconds before the case began.
The case is likely to be Russia’s most high-profile legal event this year. Khodorkovsky’s original prosecution was widely seen as retribution after the tycoon funded opposition parties ahead of the 2003 Duma elections.
Some analysts, however, believe the choice of Moscow rather than Siberia as a trial venue is a hopeful sign. President Medvedev has said he wants to replace Russia’s corrupt and inefficient judiciary with a genuinely independent legal system.
“This case is of immense importance because of what it will say to all of us about where Russia is going,” Robert Amsterdam, one of Khodorkovsky’s lawyers, said yesterday.
He dismissed the evidence against the tycoon as “absurd.”
It is not clear yet whether the case, which could last more than six months, will be heard in open court.
Prosecutors say Khodorkovsky helped embezzle 900 billion roubles (US$25 billion) and laundered 500 billion roubles, charges that could see him jailed for 22 years.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion