Strongman, The

what he did was normal ‘lobbying’, as happens in any country, but the Kremlin saw it differently: ‘He was buying up the Duma!’ Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, exclaimed to me, clearly as affronted by the idea as his boss was. The Kremlin apparently feared that Khodorkovsky was planning to use his influence in the Duma to change the constitution, to turn Russia into a parliamentary democracy – and perhaps even become prime minister himself, directly challenging Putin’s power.
    People who know Khodorkovsky often point to his reckless streak. It was on show at a dramatic and perhaps fateful meeting of leading businessmen with Putin in St Catherine’s Hall in the Kremlin on 19 February 2003. 11 The main item on the agenda was corruption. Khodorkovsky was the main speaker, and he was planning to say some extraordinarily provocative things about corruption he suspected was going on in the top circles of government. He was nervous, and called his vice-president, Leonid Nevzlin, for advice. ‘Do you think my presentation is dangerous?’ he asked.
    ‘Well,’ Nevzlin conceded. ‘What if Putin himself is actually mixed up in these deals?’
    ‘Come on!’ exclaimed Khodorkovsky. ‘The president controls the state budget. Do you think he’d get involved for a few million dollars of kickback?’ 12
    Khodorkovsky cleared his presentation with Putin’s chief of staff, Voloshin, and prime minister, Kasyanov. He went into the meeting armed with graphs and bar charts to illustrate his points.
    Much of his presentation was based on opinion-poll findings: 27 per cent of Russians believed corruption to be the most dangerous threat to the nation; 49 per cent believed most state officials were corrupt (15 per cent thought all officials were); a large majority felt the government either could not or would not do anything to combat corruption.
    ‘If you look at the next slide,’ Khodorkovsky went on, ‘you can see that the level of corruption in Russia is in the region of 30 billion dollars – that’s 10 to 12 per cent of GDP.’
    Another slide showed that 72 per cent of Russians had no faith in the justice system because judges were institutionally corrupt. And Khodorkovsky raised a remarkable fact about applications for Russian university places. Young people were less interested in studying to become engineers or oilmen than ... tax inspectors! Their salaries would be low, but the opportunities to supplement them through bribery were enormous. ‘If we are setting our young people on this course, it’s something we should think about,’ said Khodorkovsky.
    ‘Well, there is food for thought there,’ retorted Putin, ‘but let’s not apply the presumption of guilt to our students!’
    But Khodorkovsky was only warming up. Now he moved on to a specific case of corruption that involved people in Putin’s closest circle – specifically his deputy chief of staff and confidant Igor Sechin, who effectively controlled the state oil sector. (He would soon become chairman of the government-owned Rosneft.)
    Khodorkovsky referred to Rosneft’s purchase, the previous month, of a smaller oil company, Severnaya Neft, for $600 million – far in excess of its true value. ‘Everyone believes that this deal had, so to speak, an ulterior motive.’
    For everyone listening the implication was clear. As Andrei Illarionov, Putin’s adviser, recalled later: ‘It was obvious that the difference between the sale price and the actual price was a pure and simple kickback – corruption.’ 13 In other words, the huge excess payment to the small company was shared by its owners with the government officials who had authorised it.
    ‘Yes, corruption is spreading in our country,’ Khodorkovsky continued. ‘And you might say that it started right here with us ... but it has to stop some time!’
    Putin shot back, asserting that as a state company Rosneft was obliged to buy assets such as Severnaya Neft in order to increase its reserves. As for Khodorkovsky’s own company, Putin hinted that he had acquired it illegally: ‘Some companies like Yukos have huge surpluses of oil. How they acquired them is precisely what today’s meeting is about! And let’s not forget the question of the payment – or non-payment – of taxes. Your own company [Yukos] had problems with non-payment of taxes. I have to give you your due – you came to an agreement with the tax authorities and the case was closed, or is being closed. But how did