(Vatican Radio) Former billionaire tycoon and Kremlin critic, Mikhail Khodorkovsky
(pictured, left), has flown to Germany after being pardoned by Russia’s president
Vladimir Putin.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, arrived in Berlin
after spending 10 years in prison for what many in the West believe were trumped-up
offenses.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin pardoned his long-time rival Friday
morning.
Prison authorities said the former leader of the country's largest
oil company, Yukos, left a prison in the remote northwestern village of Segezha near
the Arctic Circle.
Putin claims Khodorkovsky asked for the pardon because of
his elderly mother’s poor health. Kodorkovsky's mother is suffering of cancer and
has been treated in Germany.
AMNESTY REQUEST DENIED
Yet, the 50-year-old
former business man's lawyers have denied he asked for amnesty.
Former Yukos
lawyer Svetlana Bakhima isn't surprised.
She says freeing Russia's most famous
prisoner — along with an amnesty for two jailed members of an ant-Putin punk band
and 30-Greenpeace activists is aimed at easing international criticism of Russia's
human rights record, ahead of February's Winter Olympics in Sochi.
“All this
is happening at once, on the eve of the Olympics, which has probably played a role
because now many leaders refuse to come to our country," she said. "Putin’s move today
will soften the situation in the country ahead of the games.”
However on the
streets of Moscow people divided over his release.
PUTIN PRESSURED?
“Of
course it’s all great, but Putin had to do it, you see?," a woman said. “Otherwise
the Olympics would have failed.”
Another local resident said, “He should
stay in jail. He robbed Russia, so that’s why he should stay there.”
However
Khodorkovsky's supporters say the oil tycoon angered the Kremlin by funding opposition
parties and also was believed to harbour personal political ambitions.
Kodorkovsky
was worth billions of dollars but his company was effectively crushed under the weight
of a $28 billion back-tax bill following his arrest on controversial tax evasion charges.
His current net worth is now known, but experts say it's at most a mere shadow
of his onetime fortune.