The head of the Yukos oil company, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was detained early Saturday morning in Novosibirsk, was taken on a special flight to Moscow. As representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office told RIA Novosti , his interrogation will take place in the near future.

“Currently, measures are being taken to call his lawyers in order to conduct an interrogation. No investigative actions are being carried out with Khodorkovsky without lawyers,” the agency’s interlocutor emphasized.

Khodorkovsky's lawyer Anton Drel confirmed to ITAR-TASS that the interrogation of the head of YUKOS should take place in the near future at the Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General's Office. “Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself called me and asked me to come to the prosecutor’s office building,” the lawyer said.

As previously explained in the Department of Information and Public Relations of the Prosecutor General's Office, Khodorkovsky was detained for forcibly brought in for questioning. “Khodorkovsky was summoned for questioning last Friday, but did not appear before the investigators, pointedly ignoring their call,” ITAR-TASS quotes representatives of this department.

According to the same agency, investigators intend to interrogate Khodorkovsky in a criminal case regarding theft and tax evasion by a number of companies controlled by YUKOS.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was detained on Saturday morning at the Novosibirsk Tolmachevo airport. There, a Tu-134 aircraft belonging to the Meridian company with Khodorkovsky on board landed for refueling. The head of YUKOS was flying from Nizhny Novgorod to Irkutsk, and from there he intended to go to the Angarsk petrochemical plant owned by the company. Khodorkovsky has been on a working trip to Russian regions for the past two weeks.

The arrest action was carried out by armed people, presumably FSB officers, who arrived on two buses. At the same time, the deputy head of the FSB department for the Novosibirsk region told ITAR-TASS that he did not have information and refused to comment.

As the YUKOS management reported to the Ekho Moskvy radio station , on October 23 at about 4:00 p.m., the Prosecutor General's Office actually received a call to Mikhail Khodorkovsky for Friday, October 24. However, the company's lawyers say that they promptly informed the Prosecutor General's Office that the head of YUKOS would not be able to appear for questioning because he was on a business trip. His return to Moscow was scheduled for Monday evening, October 27. The Prosecutor General's Office was notified of this both by telephone and in writing, and was also informed that Khodorkovsky was ready to appear at the prosecutor's office on Tuesday, October 28.

There were no additional demands for Khodorkovsky’s immediate return to Moscow, the company’s management noted. “The statement about a demonstrative failure to appear for interrogation is a lie,” Yukos press secretary Alexander Shadrin told Ekho Moskvy.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was brought to Moscow for interrogation