How many crimes can one man commit?

Russia

Yegor Stasov

Sobesednik

The Kremlin’s accusations against Mikhail Khodorkovsky have reached the point of absurdity, said Yegor Stasov in the Moscow magazine Sobesednik. The former owner of Yukos oil company was convicted last year on dubious charges of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years of hard labor. If he were truly guilty, that should have been the end of it. Lately, though, Kremlin-controlled publications have been “churning out an ominous quantity of articles purporting to reveal the full extent” of Khodorkovsky’s crimes. It’s as if the Kremlin knows that most people believe the man was unjustly persecuted for his political opposition to President Vladimir Putin, and is trying to provide new justifications for his jailing. But these new, unofficial charges are so preposterous that “even those who want to be convinced will find them very hard to believe.” Khodorkovsky is accused of “planning to seize power” by buying off the members of the state legislature. Yet the legislature is heavily dominated by the Kremlin-backed parties. Are we supposed to “picture the oligarch visiting the presidential administration in the dead of night, with a large bag of money, seeking to buy power from, well, those in power?” The idea “would be funny if it weren’t so sad.”

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