MOSCOW (AP) – Russian prosecutors said Friday that jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner organized the theft of oil worth $32 billion in the first details of new embezzlement and money laundering charges filed this week against Russia’s once-richest man.
A statement posted on the Prosecutor General’s Web site said that between 1998-2003 Khodorkovsky and business partner Platon Lebedev stole oil worth more than $32 billion from OAO Yukos’ subsidiaries.
The oil was illegally acquired under the guise of “well fluid” and subsequently sold on via intermediary firms for three to four times more, the statement said.
The firms were registered both in Russia and outside to “implement the scheme for selling stolen oil and leaving a part of the proceeds overseas,” the statement said. A total of $24.5 billion was laundered between 1998-2004 as a result, the prosecutors said.
Prosecutors also alleged that Khodorkovsky organized the theft of shares belonging to the state in the Eastern Oil Company.
Khodorkovsky’s legal team has long insisted that the company’s business structure was legal and had been meticulously audited by foreign consultants to international standards.
Khodorkovsky, a billionaire who was once Russia’s wealthiest man, was arrested in 2003 and tried alongside a tax probe that put most of his Yukos oil company into state hands. He is serving an eight-year prison sentence after being convicted of fraud and tax evasion in a politically charged trial widely seen as a Kremlin-driven punishment for his challenges of President Vladimir Putin and funding of opposition political parties.
Prosecutors on Monday filed new money laundering charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in what their defense lawyers said was a new effort to keep the tycoon behind bars beyond next year’s presidential elections.
