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Associated Press, July 4, 2003

Russian Oil Executive Faces Questioning

By Mara D. Bellaby

AP Photo
MOSCOW - The head of Russia's largest oil company was summoned Friday to the General Prosecutor's Office to answer questions connected with the detention of a close business associate for alleged fraud.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief executive of Russia's Yukos oil company and Russia's richest man with $8 billion according to Forbes magazine, spent just under two hours being questioned.

Looking relaxed as he emerged, Khodorkovsky said no questions were connected to Yukos' economic activity. In remarks shown on Russia's NTV television, Khodorkovsky said only that the questions focused on "that which has already been expounded on in the press."

The prosecutor's office declined comment.

Khodorkovsky's associate, billionaire Platon Lebedev, was arrested this week amid allegations that he defrauded the state of $283 million in the 1994 privatization of the Apatit fertilizer company.

Lebedev is chairman of the Menatep group, a holding company with assets worth a reported $30 billion, including 61 percent of Yukos.

Opposition politicians and analysts said Lebedev's detention appeared to be a warning from the government to big business ahead of December's parliamentary elections.

Khodorkovsky, an increasingly influential business leader, has supported a number of opposition parties. Lebedev's detention came out of an investigation requested by lawmaker Vladimir Yudin, a member of the pro-Kremlin Fatherland-All Russia faction.

Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, called it a "political, pre-election mop-up operation that is being carried out to suppress political opponents," according to the Interfax news agency.

Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko called for the case to be resolved quickly, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

"I would like to wish for more substance from the defense and prosecutors in order to clarify the situation as soon as possible," Khristenko was quoted as saying, adding that the market is keenly influenced by any uncertainty.

When Russia's vast assets were privatized after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, they were snapped up on the cheap by a handful of astute businessmen. These businessmen, known in Russia as oligarchs, played a big role in deciding policy under former President Boris Yeltsin. President Vladimir Putin has made it his goal to keep big businessmen out of politics and has vowed to get rid of oligarchs "as a class."

 

Associated Press, July 4, 2003

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