Russian police question country's richest man

RUSSIA: Russian police questioned the country's richest man yesterday as simmering tension between the Kremlin and billionaire businessmen threatened to erupt ahead of national elections.

Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky seemed unruffled as he emerged from the prosecutor's office, but he shed little light on the fraud case engulfing one of his closest allies in Yukos, the oil firm at the heart of his fortune of more than £5 billion sterling. "The company itself in this case has not been discussed," the 40-year-old said after two hours of questioning.

Another major Yukos shareholder spent five hours with investigators yesterday and police searched offices containing potentially sensitive documents about Yukos and other Khodorkovsky-controlled firms.

Mr Khodorkovsky was summoned after billionaire Platon Lebedev was charged with embezzling some £150 million in the mid-1990s, when post-Soviet turmoil allowed a few ruthless "oligarchs" to seize huge industrial assets at knockdown prices.

Mr Khodorkovsky, a former Communist Party member, government adviser and deputy minister, snapped up some of Siberia's biggest oilfields for a fraction of their real value. In April, Yukos bought rival Sibneft, to form a Russian oil giant with an estimated value of $35 billion.

One of the main beneficiaries of the deal was Mr Roman Abramovich, Russia's second richest man, who bought Chelsea football club this week. Having watched with admiration Mr Abramovich's unexpected sporting coup, Russia's business elite reeled at news of the summons for Mr Khodorkovsky, who had seemed too powerful to be touched by the country's habitually feeble law-enforcers.

The businessman's mistake, many observers say, was to suggest that he might move into politics, and so stray into territory jealously guarded by the Kremlin.

"He admitted that he has political ambitions, he didn't hide it, and now he has received his answer," embattled tycoon Boris Berezovsky said from London.

Mr Berezovsky, who is fighting extradition to Russia on fraud charges, said that President Vladimir Putin's campaign team was determined to crush opposition ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential vote next March.

Mr Khodorkovsky helps to fund the main liberal opposition parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, which will challenge Mr Putin's Unity party in the elections.