International Herald Tribune : Founder of Yukos sent to Siberia

Reuters
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2005

MOSCOW The Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to Siberia to serve his eight-year sentence, the authorities said Thursday, sparking outrage among his defense lawyers and rights advocates.

Khodorkovsky's supporters said sending him to the other side of the vast Russian Federation was a continuation of a Kremlin campaign to isolate the critic of President Vladimir Putin's leadership.

Penal officials said the 42-year-old oil tycoon, once Russia's richest man, had arrived at camp IK-10, near the border with China and 6,000 kilometers, or 3,730 miles, from his native Moscow, to serve his sentence for fraud and tax evasion. Human rights groups accused the authorities of violating Russian law by sending him so far from his home and family.

"It is a normal camp providing normal living conditions," the Interfax news agency quoted Alexander Pleshkov, head of the local prison administration, as saying.

Khodorkovsky's whereabouts had been the subject of intense speculation since he was transferred from a jail in Moscow after losing his appeal against conviction in September.

Supporters said Khodorkovsky, who built up the oil company Yukos, was the victim of a Kremlin campaign to neutralize him as a political rival and break up his company. Russian officials said he was a common criminal.

Khodorkovsky's associate, Platon Lebedev, who also was sentenced to eight years, has been sent to a prison camp above the Arctic circle.

IK-10 camp, near Krasnokamensk, has about 1,000 inmates, according to Khodorkovsky's press center. Its original inmates in the 1960s helped build a uranium processing plant, though the camp now produces only textiles like clothing and bedding.

Khodorkovsky's legal team was working out how to visit him, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported. "The road there is not an easy one. A six-hour flight and a seven-hour drive," said a defense lawyer, Genrikh Padva.

International Herald Tribune, 10.20.2005