Mikhail Khodorkovsky unwilling to recollect the past

Giving himself credit for the development of Yukos, Mr. Khodorkovsky does not mention anything about his criminal past

The status of a prisoner does not stop the former CEO of the Russian oil giant Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, from conducting activities with mass media. When communicating with Russian reporters, Mr. Khodorkovsky tries to display decorum and cultivate the image of a dissident to conceal criminal aspects of his biography. Quite on the contrary, when it comes to interviews with foreign media outlets, the former Russian oligarch feels really inspired to dwell upon his efforts that he used to take to raise the Russian economy from ruins under severe conditions of the incipient market system.

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Mr. Khorodkovsky did not say anything about the distribution of corruption assets of Russia's largest enterprises among a narrow circle of oligarchs during his recent interviews with journalists from leading foreign media outlets. The former media tycoon apparently decided to turn over that page of his life and switch journalists' attention to his current disgraceful position. Mikhail Khodorkovsky stated that he was going to stop his business career and start dealing with public activities, to form a civil society in Russia as well as independent and responsible opposition. The former CEO of Yukos did not recollect the dark sides of his past, which cast shadow on the image of the “political prisoner.” Mr. Khodorkovsky did not even answer direct questions on the matter.

In particular, Mikhail Khodorkovsky told a Corriere della Sera correspondent that he had supposedly paid two billion dollars for 40 percent of Yukos, the debt burden of which was evaluated at three billion dollars in 1996-1997. Estonia's Slohtuleht Newspaper wrote a story about Mr. Khodorkovsky making an up-to-date prosperous oil company from the “dilapidated conglomerate of outdated assets,” as Yukos used to be according to Khodorkovsky's opinion.

It brings up the idea that the former oligarch probably makes such statements with a hope that foreign journalists are ignorant when it comes to profound analysis of Russia's economic experience in the middle and at the end of the 1990s.

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