Russian tycoon faces charges of $1bn fraud and tax evasion

WHEN one of the plum prizes went on the block in Russia’s chaotic sell-off of former Soviet assets, the highest bid for a stake was $1 billion — but prosecutors say Mikhail Khodorkovsky snapped it up for just $210,000.

Detailed in a 33-page indictment, the allegations of bid-rigging and fraud are among the charges that have made Russia's richest tycoon its most famous inmate.

The government claims Khodorkovsky has cheated his country out of more than $1 billion through fraud, tax evasion and other crimes. But critics see his jailing as the response of a control-minded state to a man who emerged from the crooked mould of post-Soviet capitalism to become chief of a progressive company then riled President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin by showing signs he wanted to remake Russia, The prosecutors' story of the 1994 sale of a 20% stake in Apatit, Russia's largest manufacturer of a key fertiliser component, is told in the indictment called Information on Criminal Case No 18/41-03.