Ireland’s role in tale of oligarch who became Putin enemy No.1
New documentary reveals $100k of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s assets were ‘frozen in Dublin’
Ireland’s embarrassing role in the chilling tale of Russian oligarchs, Citizen K – now on Amazon Prime Video – tells the story behind Vladimir Putin’s Russia through one of its more colourful oligarchs. Ireland plays a bit-part role in the film – but its role in the full story is more than a bit embarrassing. The titular character is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the wealthiest man in Russia, ‘who… served a decade in prison, and became an unlikely martyr for the anti-Putin movement’. Now he is looking for a ‘third act’ as a vocal and well-funded opposition figure in exile, the film says.
Khodorkovsky was one of seven oligarchs who became incredibly wealthy by snapping up Russian state assets for a relative pittance in the 1990s.
At one point seven men owned more than 50% of the Russian economy. Khodorkovsky had the richest prize – a huge part of Russia’s massive oil reserves. Another, Boris Berezovsky, became a TV tycoon. Putin was originally put in power by these oligarchs as a ‘nobody’ who would do their bidding. Boy, did they get that wrong!
Putin eyed their incredible wealth and power enviously. He was enraged at being portrayed on state TV as a Spitting Image-type puppet and then when shown in an unfavourable light at the time of the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000, where many sailors needlessly died. ‘Heavies’ were shown jabbing a syringe into a protesting mother and dragging her away. The TV magnates behind a relatively liberal media were soon threatened with jail and fled abroad.
Berezovsky continued to criticise Putin. He was eventually found hanged by his cashmere scarf in Britain in 2013 in what the coroner recorded as an ‘open verdict’ over the cause of death.
Khodorkovsky also got on the wrong side of Russia’s boss for what he believed were the right reasons.
He said in the film: ‘I am not an ideal man, far from it. But I am a man of ideals.’ In 2003, he challenged the Russian leader over what he believed was a dodgy deal as Putin sought to renationalise oil assets for a song. He soon found himself in Siberia, jailed with his lawyer and other colleagues on tax evasion charges.
Khodorkovsky’s Yukos’ oil assets, worth billions, ended up with Rosneft, the state oil company run by one of Putin’s closets friends, Igor Sechin. A new elite – Oligarchs 2.0 – had just been
formed, Citizen K notes. Russia’s wealth was back in the ownership of a state, a state run by – and for – Putin and his band of cronies. Khodorkovsky was later charged with stealing 350 million tonnes of oil – enough oil to encircle the earth three times in rail tankers.
‘If he had stolen it, where did he put it? And if he never sold it, why did he owe the taxes [from the first trial]?,’ Citizen K asks. We should note that Kremlin-linked charges often don’t make sense. Like their blatant assassinations, they almost seem designed that way as a terror-tactic to show who’s boss. The message is: ‘We can charge
you [and your lawyer] with literally anything… just like we can kill you any way we like.’ Khodorkovsky was sent down for another 12 years.
After his lawyers led an international campaign, Putin pardoned him to drum up global support for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. But Khodorkovsky wouldn’t keep quiet. And in 2015, Russia ordered his arrest for the murder of Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov 17 years earlier – a charge rejected by Interpol. In fact, Citizen K alleges: ‘The anti-Putin Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned to death six months after he delivered an affidavit [stating that] the Russian Secret Services paid for the murder.’
‘Khodorkovsky, Amnesty prisoner of conscience, needed access to his assets. But $100m was frozen in Dublin for five vital years at the request of the Irish police.’ And this ‘should be a source of national shame’, Mr Khodorkovsky’s legal counsel said at a court hearing in December 2016. He described An Garda Síochána as ‘the only government agency in the free world that seems to take the view that these convictions are valid’.
Counsel for the Garda was Michael McDowell, an outspoken critic of leftist support for Putin’s regime. Khodorkovsky’s money was eventually released and used to help set up Open Russia, which promoted reform in that country until it was shut down last year.