Watching The World: Wiesel supports Khodorkovsky

July 5, 2010
The oil and gas industry should be pleased to hear that Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel has launched a global campaign to free imprisoned Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The oil and gas industry should be pleased to hear that Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel has launched a global campaign to free imprisoned Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

"We all believe it is a political case," said Wiesel who—on the eve of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to the US—held a lunch for prominent Americans to determine how to pressure Russia into releasing Khodorkovsky.

Although he already has served 6 years of an 8-year prison sentence, Khodorkovsky faces a further 22 years if convicted of new charges of embezzling $25 billion from Russia's now-defunct oil giant, Yukos, which he once headed.

Wiesel had no problem in reminding the 30 or so prominent Americans at his lunch, which included two former US national security advisors, that Khodorkovsky has not been "legally convicted" of any crimes.

Top priority

Analysts said the gathering suggests that the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity is making Khodorkovsky's case one of its top priorities.

However, it must also be remembered that those efforts are being made in the face of a determined opposition in the person of Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Remember? Khodorkovsky angered Putin's government by funding opposition parties before the 2003 parliamentary elections.

Khodorkovsky also had the temerity to question Kremlin policy on foreign participation in the oil industry at a time when Moscow was increasingly focused on restoring control over Russia's vast oil wealth.

Since his arrest in October 2003, Khodorkovsky's imprisonment has been widely seen in the West as the Russian government's punishment for his political ambitions and as a warning to other powerful Russian business tycoons not to criticize or compete against Kremlin officials.

Not alone

And don't think Khodorkovsky is alone in this persecution as a number of other other former executives of Yukos subsidiaries also have been tried and jailed on charges of fraud and embezzlement.

In March, a Moscow court sentenced Sergei Shimkevich, the former director of Yukos production subsidiary TomskNeft, to 12 years in prison after finding him guilty of embezzling $200 million.

Then, too, a pair of Shimkevich's former associates also received prison sentences, including Oleg Klyucherev, who was sentenced to 8½ years imprisonment and Oleg Kolyada, who got 7½ years.

Khodorkovsky's arrest is an outrage that has too long been treated as a matter of internal Russian affairs, and far too many observers have been unwilling to say much against the way things have gone for the former tycoon.

Wiesel has decided to break with that way of treating the problem. Wiesel's decision to stand up for Khodorkovsky comes long after the beginning of the process, but long as it has been in coming, Wiesel's decision is one to be applauded.

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