RUSSIA: Oil baron Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, facing a 10-year jail term on charges of fraud and tax evasion, accused Russia yesterday of launching a politically motivated campaign against him and seeking a scapegoat for the controversial 1990s privatisations.
Mr Khodorkovsky, along with billionaire ally and co-defendant Mr Platon Lebedev, were arrested last year as part of a clampdown on the Yukos oil firm they controlled, and which now faces possible bankruptcy over a multibillion-dollar claim for unpaid taxes.
"In my opinion, society for a long time has not had any illusions about the underlying political motives in this affair," Mr Khodorkovsky said, according to a transcript of his first statement to court, which was posted on a website run by his supporters.
But Mr Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man and one of the Kremlin's most powerful critics before his arrest, said he would not seek to further politicise the case, preferring to focus instead on the legal and moral merits of the charges against him.
"I don't want to shield myself from criminal accusations by making political declarations," he insisted.
"I shall prove their groundlessness not only from the point of view of the law . . . I will also prove them absurd from the ethical point of view as I will show that Yukos paid not less tax, but much more, than other companies."
Mr Khodorkovksy's allies say he is the victim of a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin, and send a warning to other "oligarchs".
"I have come to the conclusion that the authorities are prosecuting me for political reasons. The accusations are not true," asserted Mr Lebedev, whose arrest last July sparked the beginning of an onslaught against Yukos - Russia's biggest oil firm - that has seen its officials charged with crimes ranging from embezzlement to murder.
Both the accused amassed huge wealth during the quickfire and corrupt sales of state assets in the 1990s, which allowed a handful of men to purchase the former Soviet Union's prime industrial assets for a fraction of their real value.
But Mr Khodorkovsky (41), whose wealth is estimated at $15 billion, said he would not be made scapegoat for dubious deals in which the state was complicit.
"During the court proceedings, I will prove that (these charges) are a clumsy attempt to pin on me the legislative mistakes that were allowed during privatisation," he said.