FINAL STATEMENT OF MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY

Your Honor, honorable court, honorable attendees!

I am a Russian patriot, and therefore first and foremost look upon what is taking place around YUKOS, my partners, and me personally from the point of view of the interests and values of my country.
Let us recall how this all started. Nearly 2 years ago, they arrested my friend Lebedev in the hospital. I remained in Russia after Platon’s arrest, although friends and lawyers categorically recommended that I not do this. I behaved as I did because I love Russia and I believe in its future as a strong and law-governed state.
Although I made a conscious choice – to remain in the country and not to hide from anybody, a year and a half ago armed people in masks arrested me. Since that time, they are holding me under guard, refusing to release me on bail, against the pledges of dozens of the most respected citizens of our country: leading authors, scholars, actors, public figures.
A year ago began the orderly and systematic destruction of YUKOS. The entire country knows how, by whom, and why the scandalous “YUKOS case” was organized. It was contrived by certain influential people with the aim of taking for themselves the most prosperous oil company of Russian, or more precisely, the revenues from its financial flows.
When they say that the “YUKOS case” has led to a strengthening of the role of the state in the economy, this evokes bitter laughter from me.
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