Yukos was chosen as the vehicle by which the Siloviki engineered all these changes. It was chosen because the spoils were so immense, and because it represented everything the Siloviki hated. It was an open, transparent company, operating to Western standards of probity; it had no hidden depths of corruption and it strove for integration into the Western economic system. Like Yukos, I too adhered to Western values. I had founded charitable organisations; I had promoted education and the preservation of Russia’s intellectual potential, including the modernisation and computerisation of the country; I was proposing to strengthen relations with China by building a pipeline from Yukos’s Siberian oilfields; and I was partnering with American companies to expand Russian business in the West. Putin didn’t like any of this. His model was to keep business, the individuals who run it and the whole of the rest of the country on a short leash.
The FSB commandos who arrested me in Novosibirsk, the officials who arraigned me in the State Prosecutor’s Office and the jailers who hosted me in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison were unfailingly polite, at times mortified by the pantomime they were obliged to act out. The junior prosecutor who read me the charge sheet seemed embarrassed by the ludicrousness of the accusations – theft, fraud, tax evasion, both personally and by the company I led, ‘amounting to damage inflicted on the Russian state in the extent of $1 billion’.
It was the first step on the road towards a trial, in which the charges would become ever more absurd. Before October was out, the Energy Ministry had announced it was investigating the validity of all Yukos’s oil extraction licences and the Prosecutor’s Office had frozen 44 per cent of the company’s shares. It was the first time private assets had been seized by the post-Soviet state and it was a harbinger of a disturbing new era in Russian politics. A flood of protests from pro-business figures in Russia and abroad warned that the Kremlin was turning back the clock to the old days of Soviet repression. The US Senate passed a unanimous resolution demanding that Russia guarantee the full legal rights of the imprisoned Yukos directors. The American ambassador in Moscow, Sandy Vershbow, warned that the arrests would ‘negatively affect foreign investment in Russia’ and, bang on cue, the stock market lost a tenth of its value in one day.
Arriving at my trial in Moscow surrounded by prison guards
In October 2003, I was Russia’s richest man. I ran the most important corporation in the most important sector of Russia’s economy. I was a prominent philanthropist, socially active and well known in Russia and abroad. I am not saying this to boast, but rather to give you an idea of what it meant for Putin to have me locked up. It was personal for Putin, but most importantly, it was political.
I knew exactly why Putin was doing it. I had challenged his authority, and that is the one thing that autocrats cannot allow to happen. The authority of dictators lies not in the legitimate conferral of power by the freely expressed voice of the people, but on the maintenance of the myth of their invincibility. So long as Putin is able to convince the Russian people that his rule is unassailable – and he does this through threats, manipulation and increasingly through brute force – he can hope to remain in power. But once he permits his infallibility to be questioned, he risks undermining the aura of omnipotence that guarantees his survival.
My arrest therefore did not come as a surprise. What did surprise me was the inexplicable sense of relief that came over me as I was led away. Looking back, I can see why I felt that way. Over a span of several months, there had been an inexorable expectation that this arrest was about to happen. I was resisting the political drift of my country at that time. I wasn’t the only one, but I was the focus. The Kremlin had allowed me time to leave the country and hoped that I would stay away. But I felt I had to return, and once I did, the countdown started. So, you could say a certain weight lifted off my shoulders. I knew they were coming for me; it was time to stop the charade and move to the endgame.
The hardest thing in the first few weeks after my arrest was the uncertainty. I didn’t mind sharing a cell with hardened criminals – most of them were nice to me and curious to hear why someone like me had turned up so unexpectedly in their jail. I didn’t mind having my hands cuffed behind my back every time I was taken for questioning, and I didn’t mind the prison food and the bedbugs, or even knowing that there were stoolpigeons constantly spying on me. But I did resent the strain it put on my family and friends. Inna stood in line to bring me parcels of food to supplement the prison porridge. My mother, Marina, and my father, Boris, stood for hours outside the courthouse on days when I was due to appear there, hoping to touch me in the brief moments as I walked from the prison van to the entrance. Inna and the children were living in our family home in Zhukovka outside Moscow and she was struggling to convince the kids – and herself – that I was all right and would soon be released. I asked my parents to move in with her to lend a hand.
At first, I had a large cell all to myself, but I was soon joined by other prisoners. They immediately established a supply line through which mail, vodka, food and cigarettes would appear. I ran into a few acquaintances, including one in the cell opposite mine. I was amazed to learn how many people with whom I had lost touch had not actually gone abroad, but were here in jail.
Arriving at the courthouse once again
I wasn’t nervous, but I was concerned about what might be put in my food – I remembered Pichugin’s experience with the psychotropic drugs – so I refused to eat or drink anything that the jailors gave me. I drank water only from the tap, until I got my head around the situation. It took me three weeks. Now, I would say that knowing how to behave if you get arrested or taken hostage is a useful skill to learn. I recommend that anyone engaged in business, politics or social activities in Russia should learn it, because it can happen to you.
It is vital not to torment yourself with hopes of early release or worrying about what you left unfinished while you were free. It is important to say only what you consciously want to say – to speak only for your own benefit and nothing beyond that; it is astounding how things you say inadvertently can be turned against you as soon you are arrested. I can’t remember much of what I asked to be brought from home. I could easily get by without most things, but I had books, pens and notebooks brought in as fast as possible. I was preparing for a long fight and a long time inside.
My arrest triggered ructions at the highest levels of the Kremlin. On 30 October, Alexander Voloshin resigned from his post as Putin’s chief of staff in protest at my detention. He was swiftly replaced by Dmitry Medvedev, then a largely unknown young technocrat, whose first act was to criticise the freezing of Yukos’s assets. Medvedev said on national television that law enforcement agencies were sometimes prone to an ‘administrative frenzy of zeal, with ill-thought-out consequences that affect the economy and cause outrage in national politics’. Medvedev questioned whether the seizure of Yukos’s shares was ‘legally effective’, giving rise to hopes that the dispute might still be settled amicably. It sounded to me like an olive branch and I decided to take it. My overriding goal was to save the company I had built and to protect the people who worked for it. If my resignation could help to achieve these things, it was my bounden duty to do so. I issued a statement from my prison cell.