73 Facts About Mikhail Khodorkovsky

In 2003, Khodorkovsky was believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, with a fortune estimated to be worth $15billion, and was ranked 16th on Forbes list of billionaires.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky had worked his way up the Komsomol apparatus, during the Soviet years, and started several businesses during the period of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s.

In 2001, Mikhail Khodorkovsky founded Open Russia, a reform-minded organization intending to "build and strengthen civil society" in the country.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky lodged several applications with the European Court of Human Rights, seeking redress for alleged violations by Russia of his human rights.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was considered to be a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

On being pardoned by Putin and released from prison at the end of 2013, Mikhail Khodorkovsky immediately left Russia and was granted residency in Switzerland.

In 2014, Mikhail Khodorkovsky re-launched Open Russia to promote several reforms to Russian civil society, including free and fair elections, political education, protection of journalists and activists, endorsing the rule of law, and ensuring media independence.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was described by The Economist as "the Kremlin's leading critic-in-exile".

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's father was Jewish, and his mother was Russian Orthodox.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky became a fervent Communist and Soviet patriot, a member of a species that had seemed all but extinct.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky became deputy head of Komsomol at his university, the D Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, from which he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering in 1986.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky courted her and slept in his car until she took him in.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky had been a banker with Irving Trust since 1986 which was acquired by the Bank of New York in 1988.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky subsequently went on a campaign to raise investment funds abroad, borrowing hundreds of millions.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky served as an economic adviser to the first government of Boris Yeltsin.

In 1992, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was appointed chairman of the Investment Promotion Fund of the fuel and power industry.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was appointed Deputy Minister of Fuel and Energy of Russia in March 1993.

When Russia staged its greatest property giveaway ever, in 1995, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was poised to take advantage of that too.

Nevzlin told Gessen about a time when Mikhail Khodorkovsky was in Poland on business and the Soviet economic-crimes unit began harassing Nevzlin, who feared arrest under Soviet-era laws.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky funded training sessions for journalists all over the country.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky founded internet-training centres for teachers, a forum for the discussion by journalists of reform and democracy, and foundations which finance archaeological digs, cultural exchanges, summer camps for children and a boarding school for orphans.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky had been reported to be involved in negotiations with ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco to sell one or the other of them a large stake in Yukos.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was taken to Moscow and charged with fraud, tax evasion, and other economic crimes.

Yukos moved quickly to replace Mikhail Khodorkovsky with a Russian-born US citizen, Simon Kukes.

The US State Department said Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest "raised a number of concerns over the arbitrary use of the judicial system" and was likely to be very damaging to foreign investment in Russia, as it appeared there were "selective" prosecutions occurring against Yukos officials but not against others.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was defended in court by an experienced team led by Yury Schmidt and including Karinna Moskalenko.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was not seen as particularly close to Putin, who had once tried to remove him.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky received support from independent third parties who believed that he was a victim of a politicized judicial system.

In November 2010, Amnesty International Germany began a petition campaign demanding that President Medvedev get an independent review of all criminal charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights.

On 30 May 2005, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in a medium security prison.

On 19 August 2005, Mikhail Khodorkovsky announced that he was on a hunger strike in protest against his friend and associate Platon Lebedev's placement in the punishment cell of the jail.

Usually it takes around a year for an appeal to make its way through the Appeal Court, so there should have been enough time for Mikhail Khodorkovsky to be elected.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was put to work in the colony's mitten factory.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky slept in a barracks and often spent his days in a cold solitary cell in retribution for his supposed violating of various rules.

The second part of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's essay "Left Turn" was published in Kommersant on 11 November 2005, in which he expressed social democratic views.

On 13 April 2006, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was attacked by prison inmate Alexander Kuchma while he was asleep after a heated conversation.

In January 2009, the same prisoner filed a lawsuit for 500,000 rubles against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, accusing him of homosexual harassment.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's supporters pointed out that the charges came just months before Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were to become eligible for parole, as well as a year before the next Russian presidential election.

On 28 January 2008, Mikhail Khodorkovsky began a hunger strike to help his associate Vasily Aleksanyan, who is ill and was held in jail and who was denied the medical treatment he needed.

Aleksanyan was transferred from a pre-trial prison to an oncological hospital on 8 February 2008, after which Mikhail Khodorkovsky called off his strike.

In prison, Mikhail Khodorkovsky announced that he would research and write a PhD dissertation on the topic of Russian oil policy.

In May 2010, Mikhail Khodorkovsky went on a two-day hunger-strike to protest what he said was a violation of the recent law against imprisonment of persons accused of financial crimes.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky wrote a book, My Fellow Prisoners, detailing his time incarcerated.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has spoken about how his incarceration has changed his "value system" in life, and that there are now, for an example, more important things for him than business pursuits.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky explains how Yukos and Russia's oil industry functioned, but he goes beyond business matters.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky asserts his political transformation in many of his own writings from prison.

On 3 March 2010, Mikhail Khodorkovsky published an article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta about the "conveyor belt" of Russian justice.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky became eligible for parole after having served half of his original sentence in February 2007, state prosecutors began to prepare new charges of embezzlement, leading up to a second trial which began in March 2009.

Just a few days before the verdict was read by the judge before the court, Vladimir Putin made public comments with regard to his opinion of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's guilt, saying "a thief should sit in jail".

On 24 May 2011, Mikhail Khodorkovsky's appeal hearing was held, and Judge Danilkin rejected the challenge.

In June 2011, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sent to prison colony No 7 of Segezha, in the northern region of Karelia near the Finnish border.

The basis for this was in part because Mikhail Khodorkovsky "refused to attend jail sewing classes".

Mikhail Khodorkovsky did so on the following day, stating that Khodorkovsky's mother was ill and Khodorkovsky had asked for clemency.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's guards told him to pack his things and he was flown at once to St Petersburg, where he was given "a parka and a passport" and, switching planes on the tarmac, put on a flight to Berlin.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky added that he would do 'all I can do' to ensure the release of others.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has personal ties to Switzerland where his wife Inna and two of his children reside.

Yukos shareholders were awarded $50 billion in compensation by the Permanent Arbitration Court in The Hague in July 2014, however Mikhail Khodorkovsky was not a party to the legal action.

On 9 March 2014, Mikhail Khodorkovsky spoke at Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv, where he accused the Russian government of complicity in the killing of protesters.

In March 2014, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was presented with the "Man of the Year" award by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky delivered keynote speeches at the Le Monde Festival, the Freedom House Awards Dinner, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Oslo Freedom Forum, Forum 2000, the Vilnius Forum, Chatham House, the World Economic Forum, Stanford University, and the Atlantic Council.

On 20 September 2014, Mikhail Khodorkovsky officially relaunched the Open Russia movement, with a live teleconference broadcast featuring groups of civil society activists and pro-democracy opposition in Kaliningrad, St Petersburg, Voronezh and Ekaterinburg, among others.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that the organization would promote independent media, political education, rule of law, support for activists and journalists, free and fair elections, and a program to reform law enforcement and the Russian judicial system.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that Open Russia was willing to support any candidate that sought to develop Russia along the European model.

In October 2014, Mikhail Khodorkovsky visited the US, delivering the keynote address at a Washington, DC, meeting of Freedom House and giving a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In March 2015, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, along with other opposition figures, was a subject of attacks by a shadowy organization known as Glavplakat.

On 7 December 2015, Mikhail Khodorkovsky received an official summons from the Russian Investigative Committee.

In September 2016, Mikhail Khodorkovsky launched an "Instead of Putin" website where visitors can vote for alternatives to Putin.

On 20 May 2022, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was designated as 'foreign agent' by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is openly critical of what he refers to as "managed democracy" within Russia.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky promoted social programs through Yukos in regions where the company operated, one example being "New Civilization", in Angarsk, which promoted student government to young adults.

In February 2003, at a televised meeting at the Kremlin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky argued with Putin about corruption.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky implied that major government officials were accepting millions in bribes.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky referred to himself as a "political prisoner", and stated he would not re-enter business or politics.