How long will MBH last?

On March 3, preliminary hearings in the new criminal case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky will begin.

In addition to the eight years he received for fraud and tax evasion, he faces another 20 years in prison. Now Khodorkovsky is accused of laundering $30 billion and stealing 350 million tons of oil - in fact, all the black gold of Yukos and its subsidiaries.
“These are unprecedentedly huge numbers and an equally delusional accusation,” said Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant. “It’s not clear how the company could exist for many years, pay people salaries, taxes, and make investments.”

Now Khodorkovsky is being held in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, where he was transferred specifically for the new trial. Together with three other cellmates, the ex-oligarch is sitting in a special block for VIP prisoners. He is allowed transfers and meetings with his family twice a month. But, according to Khodorkovsky’s entourage, his abrupt transfer to Moscow is a purely formal procedure and does not inspire any hopes for quick freedom.
“Out of five and a half years of imprisonment, Mikhail Borisovich spent only a year in a colony,” says Khodorkovsky’s press secretary Maxim Dbar. – And the rest of the time he was in various pre-trial detention centers, where the conditions of detention are the worst of all places of deprivation of liberty.

However, a small victory for the ex-head of YUKOS took place the other day in the Meshchansky Court of Moscow - he was found not guilty of sexual harassment. More precisely, his “victim”, former cellmate Alexander Kuchma, was denied the corresponding claim.
“There could be no other outcome, this is absurd,” comments Maxim Dbar. – And of course, there was no Kuchma in this case, the employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service were behind him. They did not count on any positive outcome for themselves. It was important for them to simply discredit Mikhail, to discredit him publicly...