MOSCOW (AP) — Tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been released from prison following President Vladimir Putin's pardon, his spokeswoman told the Associated Press Friday. Tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky released from prison following President Vladimir Putin's pardon
Olga Pispanen stated that the prison chief has confirmed that Khodorkovsky has been released but she did have no further details.
Khodorkovsky spent 10 years in prison on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement. His arrest in 2003 and the following prosecution have now been widely regarded as Putin's retribution for Khodorkovsky's political ambitions.
Putin first spoke about pardon after having a news conference on Thursday, saying that Khodorkovsky has requested the pardon because his mother's health is deteriorating. The Kremlin's website published a decree Friday morning saying that Putin was “guided by the principles of humanity” when he chose to pardon Khodorkovsky.
The development — along by having an amnesty for 2 jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band and the 30-member crew of a Greenpeace protest ship — appears targeted at easing international criticism of Russia's human rights record in front of February's Winter Olympics in Sochi, Putin's pet project.
Khodorkovsky was Russia's richest man and the CEO of the country's largest oil company when he was arrested on the tarmac of a Siberian airport and faced with tax evasion. Critics have dismissed the charges against him as a Kremlin vendetta for challenging Putin's power. During Putin's first term as president, the oil tycoon angered the Kremlin by funding opposition parties and also was believed to harbor personal political ambitions.
His actions defied an unwritten pact between Putin and a thin circle of billionaire tycoons, dubbed “oligarchs,” under that the government refrained from reviewing privatization deals that made the group enormously rich.
Khodorkovsky's oil company Yukos was effectively crushed underneath the weight of a $28 billion back-tax bill. Yukos was sold off. Nearly all of it went to convey oil company Rosneft, allowing the Kremlin to reassert control of the country's oil business along with stifle an inconvenient voice.
Khodorkovsky's current net worth is unknown, but likely it's at most of the only shadow of his onetime fortune.
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