RUSSIA: Billionaire Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, appeared in court yesterday charged with massive tax evasion and fraud as a legal onslaught against his business empire threatened to bankrupt Yukos, the country's biggest oil firm.
The pre-trial session was the first substantive hearing in a case which is widely perceived as a warning shot to Russia's tycoons, a signal to them to stay out of politics and bend to the will of former KGB agent President Vladimir Putin.
The hearing was adjourned until June 8th, without a date being set for delivery of the first evidence in a trial which could land Mr Khodorkovsky in jail for 10 years and see Yukos crumble beneath an official demand for $3.5 billion in unpaid taxes and fines.
A few supporters of Mr Khodorkovsky (40) gathered at the Moscow courthouse to await his arrival, but he was ushered in through a back door under heavy guard. The hearing was closed to the public.
The magnate's mother, Maria, was outside. She said that her son had no regrets over a career which took him from the deeply corrupt cut-and-thrust of 1990s Russia to arrest at gunpoint last October, on his private jet, and brought him an estimated $15 billion fortune along the way.
"He is not guilty. I know my son. I know how I raised him," she said after climbing on to a bench in the hope of catching a glimpse of him.
She insisted that her son was realistic about the prospect of spending a decade behind bars. "I think he's prepared. He's gone through so much already and is a sensible enough person to understand what threatens him in this country."
Asked why he had not fled before his arrest, she replied: "He loves his motherland and will never leave."
Mr Khodorkovsky's lawyers want his case to be combined with that of Platon Lebedev, another billionaire Yukos shareholder, who is charged with fraud and tax evasion amounting to $1.2 billion. His arrest last July marked the beginning of a crackdown on Yukos which has seen several officials charged with crimes ranging from financial misdemeanours to murder.
Some have fled abroad rather than face legal proceedings which most analysts see as a Kremlin-backed attempt to destroy the huge wealth of Yukos and crush the nascent political ambition of Mr Khodorkovsky, who has been critical of Mr Putin, funded opposition parties and hinted at his own presidential ambitions.
His fellow "oligarchs" have stuck to a pact they sealed with Mr Putin whereby the president agreed not to delve into the murky origins of their wealth if they stayed out of politics.
When he was detained on October 28th Mr Khodorkovsky was close to selling a major stake in Yukos to ExxonMobil in a deal which would have given him cash resources and US political connections that the Kremlin might have struggled to contain.
Mr Putin insists that the case is a purely legal matter even though prosecutors have failed to subject more compliant tycoons to the same fate as Mr Khodorkovsky.
"This is so clearly a political order," said former economics minister Yevgeny Yasin. "I don't know of one oil company in Russia that didn't take advantage of the tax loopholes that Yukos is being prosecuted for now."
Shares in the firm plunged 11 per cent to $7.50 after it announced that it could be bankrupted this year under the weight of demands for tax arrears and fines.