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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."
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