The Russia Conundrum

The FSB commandos who arrested me in Novosibirsk, the officials who arraigned me in the State Prosecutor’s Office and the jailers who hosted me in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison were unfailingly polite, at times mortified by the pantomime they were obliged to act out. The junior prosecutor who read me the charge sheet seemed embarrassed by the ludicrousness of the accusations – theft, fraud, tax evasion, both personally and by the company I led, ‘amounting to damage inflicted on the Russian state in the extent of $1 billion’.

It was the first step on the road towards a trial, in which the charges would become ever more absurd. Before October was out, the Energy Ministry had announced it was investigating the validity of all Yukos’s oil extraction licences and the Prosecutor’s Office had frozen 44 per cent of the company’s shares. It was the first time private assets had been seized by the post-Soviet state and it was a harbinger of a disturbing new era in Russian politics. A flood of protests from pro-business figures in Russia and abroad warned that the Kremlin was turning back the clock to the old days of Soviet repression. The US Senate passed a unanimous resolution demanding that Russia guarantee the full legal rights of the imprisoned Yukos directors. The American ambassador in Moscow, Sandy Vershbow, warned that the arrests would ‘negatively affect foreign investment in Russia’ and, bang on cue, the stock market lost a tenth of its value in one day.

Arriving at my trial in Moscow surrounded by prison guards

In October 2003, I was Russia’s richest man. I ran the most important corporation in the most important sector of Russia’s economy. I was a prominent philanthropist, socially active and well known in Russia and abroad. I am not saying this to boast, but rather to give you an idea of what it meant for Putin to have me locked up. It was personal for Putin, but most importantly, it was political.

I knew exactly why Putin was doing it. I had challenged his authority, and that is the one thing that autocrats cannot allow to happen. The authority of dictators lies not in the legitimate conferral of power by the freely expressed voice of the people, but on the maintenance of the myth of their invincibility. So long as Putin is able to convince the Russian people that his rule is unassailable – and he does this through threats, manipulation and increasingly through brute force – he can hope to remain in power. But once he permits his infallibility to be questioned, he risks undermining the aura of omnipotence that guarantees his survival.

My arrest therefore did not come as a surprise. What did surprise me was the inexplicable sense of relief that came over me as I was led away. Looking back, I can see why I felt that way. Over a span of several months, there had been an inexorable expectation that this arrest was about to happen. I was resisting the political drift of my country at that time. I wasn’t the only one, but I was the focus. The Kremlin had allowed me time to leave the country and hoped that I would stay away. But I felt I had to return, and once I did, the countdown started. So, you could say a certain weight lifted off my shoulders. I knew they were coming for me; it was time to stop the charade and move to the endgame.

The hardest thing in the first few weeks after my arrest was the uncertainty. I didn’t mind sharing a cell with hardened criminals – most of them were nice to me and curious to hear why someone like me had turned up so unexpectedly in their jail. I didn’t mind having my hands cuffed behind my back every time I was taken for questioning, and I didn’t mind the prison food and the bedbugs, or even knowing that there were stoolpigeons constantly spying on me. But I did resent the strain it put on my family and friends. Inna stood in line to bring me parcels of food to supplement the prison porridge. My mother, Marina, and my father, Boris, stood for hours outside the courthouse on days when I was due to appear there, hoping to touch me in the brief moments as I walked from the prison van to the entrance. Inna and the children were living in our family home in Zhukovka outside Moscow and she was struggling to convince the kids – and herself – that I was all right and would soon be released. I asked my parents to move in with her to lend a hand.

At first, I had a large cell all to myself, but I was soon joined by other prisoners. They immediately established a supply line through which mail, vodka, food and cigarettes would appear. I ran into a few acquaintances, including one in the cell opposite mine. I was amazed to learn how many people with whom I had lost touch had not actually gone abroad, but were here in jail.

Arriving at the courthouse once again