Robert Amsterdam

Khodorkovsky sits in a metal cage, just like all accused in Russian courtrooms. His head is freshly shaven and he is wearing frameless plastic glasses. The black t-shirt he is wearing with blue jeans highlights the prisoner’s paleness. But Khodorkovsky seems fit, his upper arm muscles are strong. “I have kept in shape with gymnastics ever since I was a child, in prison as well. It is all a question of self-discipline,” he wrote in a letter to the Frankfurter Rundschau. His lawyer passed on written questions to him. The court officials guarding him forbid an interview in the courtroom.

The court, a two-story red brick building, is located in Chita, at least 6000 kilometers east of Moscow. In the center of the sleepy provincial town the stark atmosphere of Lenin monuments and the cement block of the one-time headquarters of the Communist party is rendered softer by crooked wooden houses and colorful, freshly painted aristocratic houses from the time of the Czars.

By law Russians have the right to go to court at the location of the supposed crime and to serve their sentence there in case of a guilty verdict. Khodorkovsky was sent to the Krasnokamensk penal camp a few hundred kilometers from Chita, not far from the Mongolian border, after his sentencing in Moscow. “This treatment is meant to make it as difficult as possible for us to interact with Micha, and keep as many journalists as possible from finding their way to him,” says Khodorkovsky’s mother Marina. She is 74 years old but she flew back to Chita in these summer days to see her son for a couple of hours in the prison where he awaits his day in court.

Perfect behavior is indispensable for release on probation. The camp management wrote reprimands into Khodorkovsky’s behavioral reports however, about lemons, drinking tea in the common room against the rules or being in possession of “literature forbidden for prisoners”: guards found a copy of the decree from the justice minister regarding prisoner’s rights in his dresser. The reprimands were annulled in court, except for the last one.

Khodorkovsky was moved from the penal camp to the prison in Chita at the end of 2006. Since February 2007 his cellmate had been the 5-time auto thief Igor Gnesdilov. Now he is sitting in a café in Chita and talking about Khodorkovsky. “We talked about Russians and Americans, watched TV or read. Mikhail Borisovitch always had dozens of books in the cell, especially historical and sociological studies. When we argued he pulled out the Encyclopedia Britannica from under his bed and proved to me I was wrong.”

The greatest strain during the forced cohabitation with Khodorkovsky was the constant observation, Gnesdilov said. “Khodorkovsky is prisoner number one. The entire prison section reconstructed especially for him including a walking track, shower and of course the cell is monitored with cameras all the time. Prison extras for him and his cellmate are impossible.”

Despite the strict rules, Russian prisoners and guards do brisk business. Prisoners bargain for mobile telephones or a bottle of cognac. in 2004 Gnesdilov bought himself an undisturbed roll in the hay after he fell in love on the prison grounds with the convicted murderess Svetlana. Nine months later Svetlana gave birth to Danil in an empty interrogation room and raised him in prison.

On their third birthday prison children must leave their mothers and are put in orphanages if no family member is willing to take them. Gnesdilov wanted to take care of his son after his imminent parole. An attorney explained to Gnesdilov that he would only be released if he accused Mikhail Khodorkovsky of refusing to place is hands behind his back despite an order. Gnesdilov signed the prepared statement. Khodorkovsky received a new reprimand. “I did not behave towards Mikhail Borisovitch as honor would have me do,” Gnesdilov says today, eight months after his release from prison, “but I did it for my son. For the first time I have someone I have to take care of.” If Gnesdilov passes the truck-driving test, he can start work in a transport company. Evenings and weekends he is dedicated to Danil. “I hope I can get my life under control.”

Khodorkovsky’s lawyers want to challenge the reprimands during the trial on Thursday and “hope for a positive decision,” says lawyer Boris Grusd. But even in this case Russia’s most famous prisoner will not be released. The public prosecutor has already accused Khodorkovsky and his ex-business partner Platon Lebedev of supposed embezzlement. The supposed total damages are said to be 23 billion dollars.

The public prosecutor in particular accuses Khodorkovsky of using Yukos to buy oil extracted from his subsidiaries cheaply, and subsequently sell it on the world market for several times the value. The lawyer Grusd calls the accusation “absurd.” Experts such as ex-prime minister Jegor Gaidar tend to agree. “These transactions were legal,” says Gaidar in the Russian weekly magazine New Times. State or Kremlin-associated oil and gas companies such as Gasprom, Rosneft or Lukoil use tax saving models and different oil and gas prices domestically and on foreign markets still today. But Yukos is being charged.

“We could easily prove that Khodorkovsky did not commit a single crime. But the defense is not allowed,” says Grusd. At the beginning of the Yukos affair investigators seized the entire Yukos database including balance books, tax returns, annual accounts and finance ministry or reports from Russian ministries and Western auditors. The public prosecutor’s office is using the company documents to make charges, yet refuses Khodorkovsky and his lawyers access to them.

“Our electronic database would show that nothing was embezzled, with everything remaining within the company,” Khodorkovsky said during the pre-trial hearing in Chita. “Our original accounts prove that the public prosecutor is purposefully forging data in the evidence. Not a single figure from the public prosecutor’s ordered reports corresponds to actual figures of our accounts.”

The public prosecutor continues to deny the accused Khodorkovsky access to his own documents. “The public prosecutor is obligated to protect the evidence. She cannot be convinced that the evidence will remain intact if the accused has access to it,” which seems a strange argument in the age of so many copying options. “The requests clearly show a design to delay the process. Yukos was a large company. To dig through all that material would take far too much time”, according to the public prosecutor. In the end the young judge denied Khodorkovsky’s request to be allowed to defend himself using his own documents and an independent expert.

Sergei Taratuchin, supervisor for cleaning woman and icon sellers at Chita’s cathedral, is not surprised by the judge’s decision. Taratuchin used to be Father Sergei, a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church at Krasnokamensk and pastor for the inmates at the penal camp.

Father Sergei also visited Khodorkovsky and told the camp directors that he refused to bless the management building “as long as they have political prisoners in the camp.” A few days later, after a complaint from the camp direction to the Bishop of Chita, Taratuchin was moved to a small village.

After he also criticized his highest superior, Patriarch Alexi, of passivity regarding Khodorkovsky, the Patriarch defrocked him. Taratuchin has no hope of recovering his robes. He has not changed his mind about Khodorkovsky. “If everyone in Russia were to be punished who made a large fortune in the 1990s it would be one thing. But when just one Khodorkovsky is punished, it is unjust.” The defrocked priest asks God daily, “Lord, forgive those who are unjust to Khodorkovsky. Amen”

As Mikhail Khodorkovsky was imprisoned in October 2003, “I knew that he would be spending a long time in prison,” says his mother over tea in a small apartment that the Khodorkovskys have rented in Chita for family members and lawyers. “Russia is being led by a KGB man again. We Soviets know what that means.”

His wife Inna and eldest daughter Nastaja visit Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Chita. Inna has forbidden the small twins to visit him, since the boys wanted to break the glass pane that separated them from their imprisoned father.

From the exchange of letters between the Frankfurter Rundschau and Mikhail Khodorkovsky:

There are many versions as to why the Kremlin had you arrested in 2003 and destroyed Yukos. They say Yukos dealt too independently, controlled more than 100 members of parliament and followed its own energy policies. In a meeting with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in February 2003 you denounced corruption in the environment around him. When he rejected your suggestion for a Yukos pipeline to China you answered: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, you fail to understand the importance the relationship with China.” Were you brought down because you didn’t show the Czars the respect they demand?

If we leave economic interests aside, what remains is that I was socially engaged, and personally supported opposition parties financially. In the meeting with the president I gave a lecture on corruption in the highest levels of power. This lecture was the result of discussions with many people, including Kremlin authorities. Several of them had to leave the Kremlin afterwards. Those are the facts. The rest is myth. The new charges brought against me are also complete lunacy.

Do you regret not having fled the country in 2003, despite warnings of arrest?

I am sorry for other Yukos people who have also been condemned to prison, and for my family. But for me it was above all a question of my honor, of faith or betrayal, and in the end patriotism. In this situation I couldn’t just walk away.

What would you do if you were released? Be a businessman again, politician, or something else?

I have built up a great debt to my family, even if unwillingly. I would above all try and pay that back.

If Mikhail Khodorkovsky is found guilty in a new trial, he could be condemned to another 22 years in the prison camp. His lawyers have calculated this. He would then be 67 upon his release.