RUSSIA: Russian oil billionaire Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky went on trial for massive tax evasion and fraud yesterday, in a case that pits the country's richest man against its most powerful.
Almost eight months after being arrested at gunpoint on his private jet, Mr Khodorkovsky appeared in a cramped, stuffy Moscow courtroom to answer charges that President Vladimir Putin says are simply part of a crackdown on all businessmen who have dodged tax and misappropriated funds.
But the magnate's lawyers allege that Mr Putin has unleashed power-hungry former colleagues from the KGB to silence his highest-profile critic and fire a warning shot across the bows of other potential foes.
About 20 young supporters waved placards outside the dishevelled courthouse, to demand a fair and open trial for Mr Khodorkovsky (40), who was ushered in through a back entrance under heavy guard.
His dapper Toronto-based lawyer, Mr Robert Amsterdam, said he expected neither justice nor transparency from the hearings against his client, who founded the huge Yukos oil firm and ran it until earlier this year, when legal attack forced him out.
"I am expecting nothing more than I've seen in the past," Mr Amsterdam said as he pushed through a scrum of Russian and international media. "This is a country that destroys its finest company while its senior members languish in jail illegally."
Court officials said the size of Mr Khodorkovsky's defence team left space for only a handful of reporters in the courtroom, where he could be sentenced to 10 years in a labour camp if the three presiding judges find him guilty.
Sitting in the metal cage reserved for defendants in Russian trials and dressed in casual clothes, Mr Khodorkovsky smiled and chatted with Mr Platon Lebedev, another billionaire Yukos shareholder, who is being tried simultaneously on almost identical charges.
After calling a recess because the little courtroom was so stuffy, officials unexpectedly let journalists and cameramen approach the defendants' cage.
"Everything is OK, you can see for yourselves," Mr Khodorkovsky insisted, before saying of his long-term ally Mr Lebedev: "We haven't seen each other for almost a year. Now we have a chance to talk. About everything, but mostly our families."
After considering a few procedural matters, the court was adjourned until Mr Khodorkovsky's main Russian lawyer recovers from hospital treatment received this week. He is not expected to be available until at least next Monday. The judge also rejected an appeal from Mr Lebedev to be allowed to stay at home during the trial.
The two tycoons were at the heart of the deals that created Yukos in the 1990s, when the former Soviet Union's finest state assets - mostly oil and metals operations - were sold off at absurdly low prices in rigged auctions.
Government ministers from the time - and perhaps former president Boris Yeltsin - may be called to give evidence.
Yukos gained a reputation in recent years of being arguably Russia's most efficient and transparent firm, while Mr Khodorkovsky, whose wealth is estimated at some $15 billion, began funding opposition parties and suggested he may run for president in 2008, when Mr Putin is constitutionally obliged to step down.
His growing political activity irked the Kremlin, and apparently broke a pact that Russia's "oligarchs" sealed with Mr Putin in 2000, whereby he agreed not to investigate the murky origins of their wealth if they stuck solely to business.