Russian prosecutors have launched legal proceedings to confiscate up to $13 million from former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his longtime business partner Platon Lebedev, according to Russian media reports on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Prosecutor General\u2019s Office reportedly filed a lawsuit earlier this month with the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow against Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and the defunct Siberian Leasing Company. Initial hearings are scheduled for May 27.<\/p>\n
Unnamed sources told Russian news agencies that the case centres around 986 million rubles ($11 million) and $1.8 million still deposited in accounts at National Bank Trust that prosecutors aim to seize.<\/p>\n
The legal move marks the latest chapter in the long-running saga involving Khodorkovsky, once Russia\u2019s wealthiest man through his control of the Yukos oil empire before his arrest in 2003 on fraud charges.<\/p>\n
Khodorkovsky was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin in 2013 after serving more than a decade in prison. Lebedev, his former business partner at Yukos\u2019 parent company Menatep, was convicted of money laundering and released in 2014 after nine years behind bars.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s latest attempt to confiscate funds follows the Amsterdam Court of Appeal upholding in March a $50 billion arbitration award to former Yukos shareholders over Russia\u2019s seizure of the company\u2019s assets.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin has vowed to appeal that record award, insisting the long-running bankruptcy dispute should not be subject to foreign courts. Tuesday\u2019s legal actions appear aimed at clawing back funds from two of Yukos\u2019 most prominent former executives.<\/p>\n
Khodorkovsky, who now resides in London, has maintained his innocence, accusing Putin of orchestrating his arrest and the dismantling of Yukos out of political motivations.<\/p>\n
Kremlin critics have alleged the actions against Khodorkovsky and the dismantling of what was once Russia\u2019s largest oil producer were retribution for his political ambitions and criticism of Putin\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
The Russian state took control of key Yukos assets following the company\u2019s controversial bankruptcy, which international arbitration bodies ruled involved violations of Russia\u2019s treaty obligations to foreign investors.<\/p>\n
Neither Khodorkovsky nor Lebedev have publicly commented on the new lawsuit targeting their assets. The case could reignite debate over what many viewed as a politically-motivated attack on Russia\u2019s original class of oligarchs who amassed massive wealth through the chaotic privatization of state assets after the Soviet collapse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Prosecutor General\u2019s Office reportedly filed a lawsuit earlier this month with the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow against Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and the defunct Siberian Leasing Company. Initial hearings are scheduled for May 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":406,"featured_media":17895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10872,10871,468,595,10873,10874,282,78,3973,10870],"class_list":["post-17894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-amsterdam-court-of-appeal","tag-khodorkovsky","tag-kremlin","tag-london","tag-menatep","tag-platon-lebedev","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-soviet","tag-yukos"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}