Russia has issued an international arrest warrant for Mikhail Khodorkovsky on suspicion of ordering a contract killing, investigators said on Wednesday, prompting the former oil tycoon to declare the Kremlin had gone mad.
Russia has issued an international arrest warrant for Mikhail Khodorkovsky on suspicion of ordering a contract killing, investigators said on Wednesday, prompting the former oil tycoon to declare the Kremlin had gone mad.
As Reuters reports Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, was pardoned by Putin in 2013 and freed after a decade in jail on fraud charges he says were politically motivated. He has angered the Kremlin in recent months with critical statements.
Russian investigators said they had concluded that Khodorkovsky had ordered subordinates to kill Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk, a Siberian oil town, in 1998. Petukhov was shot dead by a gunman near his office.
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia's Investigative Committee, said Khodorkovsky's motive for allegedly ordering the official's murder was related to Petukhov's demands for Yukos to pay local taxes he said it was evading.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky has commented on the statement of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, about the issuing of an arrest warrant in absentia.
«They’ve gone mad. Yesterday I understood that. Searches of neighbours who were ten years old at the time of this case, a law so wide in scope that it allows for the shooting of pregnant women and children of all ages – what else is needed as evidence? An arrest in absentia without any obvious facts, in this situation that must look just fine. What matters most is the safety of those others», he said.
