Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky (Михаил Борисович Ходорковский, ; born 26 June 1963), sometimes known by his initials MBK, is an exiled Russian businessman, oligarch, and opposition activist, now residing in London.

They were both opponents of communism, though they kept this from their son, who was born in 1963.

Having experienced a rise in state anti-Semitism and the death of Stalin, the Khodorkovskys were part of a generation of well-educated Soviets who were silently supportive of dissidents.

The family were moderately well off, living in a two-room flat in a concrete block in the suburbs of Moscow.

Masha Gessen wrote that they faced a dilemma raising Mikhail: “Speak your mind about the Soviet Union and risk making your child miserable, with the constant need for doublethink and doublespeak, or try to raise a contented conformist.

They chose the second path, with results that far exceeded their expectations.

Mikhail became a fervent Communist and Soviet patriot, a member of a species that had seemed all but extinct."

The young Khodorkovsky was ambitious and received excellent grades.

He had worked his way up the Komsomol apparatus, during the Soviet years, and started several businesses during the period of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s.

He became deputy head of Komsomol (the Communist Youth League) at his university, the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, from which he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering in 1986.

While in college, Khodorkovsky married a fellow student, Yelena.

They had a son, Pavel.

In 1986, he met an 18-year-old, Inna, a student at the Mendeleev Institute who was a colleague of Khodorkovsky's at the Komsomol organization.

He courted her and slept in his car until she took him in.

They had a daughter and twin sons.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the mid-1990s, he accumulated considerable wealth by obtaining control of a number of Siberian oil fields unified under the name Yukos, one of the major companies to emerge from the privatization of state assets during the 1990s (a scheme known as "Loans for Shares").

In 2001, Khodorkovsky founded Open Russia, a reform-minded organization intending to "build and strengthen civil society" in the country.

In 2003, Khodorkovsky was believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, with a fortune estimated to be worth $15billion, and was ranked 16th on Forbes list of billionaires.

In October 2003, he was arrested by Russian authorities and charged with fraud.

The government under Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, then froze shares of Yukos shortly thereafter on tax charges.

Putin's government took further actions against Yukos, leading to a collapse of the company's share price and the evaporation of much of Khodorkovsky's wealth.

In response to his first application, which concerned events from 2003 to 2005, the court found that several violations were committed by the Russian authorities in their treatment of Khodorkovsky.

Despite these findings, the court ultimately ruled that the trial was not politically motivated, but rather "that the charges against him were grounded in 'reasonable suspicion'".

He was considered to be a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

In May 2005, he was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison.

In December 2010, while he was still serving his sentence, Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were further charged with and found guilty of embezzlement and money laundering.

After Hans-Dietrich Genscher lobbied for his release, Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky, releasing him from jail on 20 December 2013.

There was widespread concern internationally that the trials and sentencing were politically motivated.

The trial was criticized abroad for the lack of due process.

Khodorkovsky lodged several applications with the European Court of Human Rights, seeking redress for alleged violations by Russia of his human rights.

On being pardoned by Putin and released from prison at the end of 2013, Khodorkovsky immediately left Russia and was granted residency in Switzerland.

At the end of 2013, his personal estate was believed to be worth, as a rough estimate, $100–250 million.

Khodorkovsky's prison sentence was extended to 2014.

At the end of 2014, he was said to be worth about $500 million.

In 2014, Khodorkovsky re-launched Open Russia to promote several reforms to Russian civil society, including free and fair elections, political education, protection of journalists and activists, endorsing the rule of law, and ensuring media independence.

He was described by The Economist as "the Kremlin's leading critic-in-exile".

Khodorkovsky's parents, Boris and Marina Khodorkovsky, were engineers at a factory making measuring instruments in Moscow.

Khodorkovsky's father was Jewish, and his mother was Orthodox Christian.

In 2015, he moved to London.

In December 2016, the Dublin District Court unfroze $100m of Khodorkovsky's assets that had been held in the Republic of Ireland.