Introduction

On October 29, 2003, the General Prosecutor's Office published a "Report" setting forth the charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then a board member of Yukos, Russia's largest oil company, who had been arrested the previous week. The charges in the Report have generally been described in the press as various counts of fraud connected with the privatization of shares in certain former state enterprises and tax evasion. However, I have not seen articles, particularly in the Western press, providing any real detail or flavor regarding the alleged crimes and how they were carried ...