The Russia Conundrum by Mikhail Khodorkovsky

The story starts in Moscow in the late 1980s, when Khodorkovsky sets up Menatep Bank, through which he buys Apatit fertiliser company at auction in 1994 and then the failing oil giant Yukos for $350m, with Menatep assuming $2 billion in debt.Ī supporter of imprisoned former head of the Yukos oil company, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky’s story is a tale of power, politics, money and influence–a business leader who built a fortune in the 1990s through Menatep, one of post-Soviet Russia's first private banks, acquiring massive amounts of shares in companies that were privatized and sold on the cheap, as Russia crawled out from communism to capitalism.įurther knitting, more to power and politics in post-Soviet Russia, Khodorkovsky even served as deputy fuel and oil minister during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency. We expect to see the Russian Federation use every trick in the book to undermine that process.” The rise and fall of Mikhail Khodorkovsky On the return of the $50 billion, he added: “It's a long, difficult and complex process that passes through the court. With the 2014 decision now reinstated, a spokesperson for the majority shareholders of Yukos described it today as “a victory for the rule of law,” adding that, “A brutal kleptocracy has been held to account.”Ī different spokesperson for the Yukos shareholders told Forbes that the group now plans to “enforce” the $50 billion award, hoping for support (in applying pressure to Russia) from the 160 national signatories around the world that have signed the New York Convention, and who provide “international recognition of arbitral awards.” However, reversing the 2014 decision, in 2016, the District Court of The Hague decided to set aside the Arbitral Awards accepting the Russian Federation’s argument that it was not bound by the globally used dispute-resolution mechanism for the arbitration of disputes with investors.

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The Russia Conundrum by Mikhail Khodorkovsky