New life for ex-prisoner
MOSCOW: Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, pardoned by Russian in jail, said President Vladimir Putin after 10 years in jail, said in remarks published yesterday that he would not go into politics or seek to regain assets of his former oil company Yukos.
Mr Khodorkovsky, who flew to Berlin after his release from a prison near the Arctic Circle on Saturday, said that there were no conditions attached to his release and that he had made no admission of guilt in asking Mr Putin for a pardon.
“I do not intend to get involved in politics and do not intend to fight for the return of assets,”Mr khodorkovsky told the Russian magazine The New Times in an interview.
Once Russia’s richest man, Mr Khodorkovsky had been in Jail since his arrest in 2003 on fraud and tax evasion charges.
He had been convicted in two trials that Kremlin critics say were politically motivated punishment for challenging Mr Putin. REUTERS