Khodorkovsky Maintains Innocence, Backs Away From Politics

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former owner of the Yukos Oil Company awaiting sentence and once the richest man in Russia, said in a statement on Wednesday that he did not want his name to be used in political projects he did not support and asked his associates not to make any addresses on his behalf.

The statement was circulated on Wednesday by Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s press center. Khodorkovsky passed it to his spokesperson through his lawyers.

The statement reads: “In reply to the requests to comment on Leonid Nevzlin’s recent public statements that I get from journalists through my lawyers, I would like to say the following:

”In a free society anyone has the right to express his opinion and thus I will not comment on my friend’s and former partner’s opinion of myself, albeit I will not conceal my surprise. I do not want to become a cause of confrontation in society and I will always personally express my own opinion as, despite the special circumstances of my present situation, I am forming my position on the most important questions of Russia’s development on my own and deliver my opinion to the public as well as the mass media.

“I do not plead guilty and I intend to get my freedom within the law, at the same time I ask my friends and enemies, in Russia and abroad, not to turn me into a banner of political and quasi-political projects with whose content I disagree.”

Khodorkovsky is currently awaiting the verdict after being tried on charges of large-scale theft of state property that allegedly took place in the 1994 privatization of a fertilizer plant. Many analysts see the trial as President Putin’s punishment for Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions. Sentencing is expected on May 16.

(From MosNews, 5.5.2005)