Following a pardon from President Vladimir Putin, former Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was released from prison Friday, officials told his lawyers, reports LaTi..
Earlier in the day, Putin signed the decree.
“Guided by principles of humanism, I decree to pardon convicted Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Borisovich, born in 1963 in Moscow setting him free of further confinement,” the Russian leader said in the decree published on the Kremlin's official website.
"The administration of Segezha [labor] colony [in the northern Karelai region] officially confirmed to [his] lawyers that he is free and has left the colony,” Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, told TV-Rain, a private liberal television network. “This is all and no further detail."
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and political agitator of Putin, was arrested in 2003 and subsequently convicted in two trials for tax evasion, fraud and money laundering. His sentence had been due to end in August.
While he was in prison, his multibillion-dollar Yukos oil company was hit with a $28 billion back-tax bill, split up and nationalized by the state, claiming material damages.
Was Khodorkovsky the Oligarch that our very own Harvard Bolsheviks blessed with the ex-USSR's Oil Industry? Why did Putin not just put a bullet in him?
ReplyDelete(Excerpted from "Records of the Great Historian" by Sima Qian)
ReplyDeleteAfter the founder of the Chinese Han dynasty, Liu Bang, bestowed honours on over 20 of his officials, there were complaints from the others.
One day, Liu Bang, met his advisor, Zhang Liang and asked him: "What are the officials quarelling about?"
Zhang Liang answered: "You rose from peasant to ruler with their help. Now, you are punishing or rewarding them as you like. I am afraid they may stage a revolt."
Liu Bang, in horror, asked: " What should I do?"
Zhang Liang asked: "Who do you hate most?"
Liu Bang:"Yong Chi embarrassed me before."
Zhang Liang said:"Promote Yong Chi and the quarrels will stop immediately."
Liu Bang did just that and officials seeing that Yong Chi was promoted, stopped the arguments.
ReplyDeleteRemember that Dear Uncle Sam letter that Warren Buffet penned to the NYT and WSJ pravdas?
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I read somewhere that, in actuality, he had to write that thing FIVE HUNDRED TIMES.
And Corzine had to sell one of his New Jersey condos.....at a LOSS..
Those Ruskkies are just uncivilized.