Khodorkovsky Weighs Political Ambitions

Chris Noon, 08.11.05, 8:38

If there's any fun to being incarcerated, it must be causing mischief from the inside. Mikhail Khodorkovsky's political ambitions will be an anathema to the Kremlin, but that could be the jailed oil magnate's exact intention.

According to a media report, Khodorkovsky said he was chewing over the possibility of running for parliament in December. Retribution for the Kremlin's decision to move the billionaire to an 11-man cell earlier this week, or just calculated humbuggery to needle his jailers?

Possibly a touch of both: "I am absolutely confident they will not allow me to run," Khodorkovsky said in a statement. "But if I am asked by people whose opinions are important to me, I will agree, although I know that firstly they will not let me win the election, and secondly that new repressions will follow."

Two liberal opposition leaders confirmed Wednesday they were mulling over asking Khodorkovsky to stand in a by-election in an electoral district of Moscow. Technically his candidature's got the green light, according to legal experts; the billionaire's still in pre-trial detention, and his appeal has yet to be heard. However, the legal wonks reckon without the intervention of the Central Election Commission, which could refuse to register Khodorkovsky as a candidate on the grounds that he was sentenced in May to nine years in prison for tax evasion and fraud.

It's still a win-win situation, points out one expert: "If he is denied registration, this will prove that the authorities fear him. If he is registered, he will use the election campaign to criticize the authorities, which will mobilize his supporters and cause a fall in [President Vladimir Putin's] ratings."

(Forbes, 8.11.2005)