In January 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the toast of Davos. As Russia’s richest man, his face had graced the front pages of Forbes and Fortune magazine. He was the symbol of Russia’s new found wealth under Vladimir Putin, as the dust settled on more than a decade of gangster capitalism and the country gradually opened to the west.
Mr Khodorkovsky had climbed through the rubble of the Soviet Union’s collapse along with the most ruthless. He parlayed ties in the Komsomol, the Communist youth organization, into a banking business, setting up Bank Menatep in 1990 as Russia lurched on its transition to a market economy. Political ties helped the bank win access to lucrative government accounts and in 1995, when Boris Yeltsin sold the crown jewels of Russian industry at a knockdown price, Mr Khodorkovsky swooped in on one of the biggest: the Yukos oil empire.
