Russia wants Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested abroad

An international arrest warrant has been issued by Russia for one of president Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critics, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on suspicion that he ordered a contract killing.

The news prompted the former oil tycoon to declare the Kremlin had gone mad.

The move came a day after police raided the Moscow offices of a pro-democracy movement founded by him.

Khodorkovsky — once Russia’s richest man — was pardoned by Putin in 2013 and freed after a decade in jail on fraud charges he says were politically motivated.

He has angered the Kremlin in recent months with critical statements.

He accused Putin in November of leading Russia into a 1970s Soviet-style period of stagnation that could eventually trigger the country’s collapse.

Earlier this month he said a peaceful revolution was “inevitable”.

Russian investigators said they had concluded that Khodorkovsky, then head of now defunct Yukos oil company, had ordered subordinates to kill Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk, a Siberian oil town, in 1998. Petukhov was shot dead by a gunman near his office.

Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said Khodorkovsky’s motive for allegedly ordering the official’s murder was related to Petukhov’s demands for Yukos to pay local taxes he said it was evading.

Markin said Khodorkovsky had also ordered the killing of a businessman, Evgeny Rybin, who was shot at in 1998 and had his car bombed in 1999 but survived.

“For the investigation, it is completely obvious that these crimes were carried out for mercenary motives,” Markin said in a statement.

“We declare Mikhail Khodorkovsky a wanted fugitive internationally.”

Khodorkovsky denies the allegations and condemned the decision, suggesting it was politically motivated.

“They have gone mad,” he said of the Kremlin, saying his arrest in absentia had been approved “without any obvious facts.”

He told a news conference earlier this month that the Kremlin had been using the murder case against him since 2003 to punish him for speaking out about corruption.