https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-03-04/crisis-were
The Sunday Times can identify Lord (Jacob) Rothschild as the secret holder of the large stake in Yukos that was previously controlled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil company’s chairman. LONDON (Agence France-Presse) Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s shares in the Russian oil giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker Jacob Rothschild, under a deal they concluded prior to Mr. Khodorkovsky’s arrest, the Sunday Times reported.
Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr. Rothschild, 67, under a “previously unknown arrangement” designed to take effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky could no longer “act as a beneficiary” of the shares, it said.
Mr. Khodorkovsky, 40, whom Russian authorities arrested at gunpoint and jailed pending further investigation last week, was said by the Sunday Times to have made the arrangement with Mr. Rothschild when he realized he was facing arrest.
Mr. Rothschild now controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost $13.5 billion, the newspaper said in a dispatch from Moscow.
Mr. Khodorkovsky owns 4 percent of Yukos directly and 22 percent through a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to Russian analysts.
From the figures reported in the Sunday Times, it appeared Mr. Rothschild had received control of all Mr. Khodorkovsky’s shares.
The two have known each other for years “through their mutual love of the arts” and their positions as directors of the Open Russia Foundation, Yukos’ philanthropic branch, it said.
Russian authorities Thursday froze billions of dollars of shares held by Mr. Khodorkovsky and his top lieutenants in Yukos — throwing control of the country’s largest oil company into limbo and causing frenzied selling on financial markets.
Russian prosecutors said owners of the shares are still entitled to dividends and retain voting rights, but can no longer sell their stakes.
They said the freeze was necessary as collateral for the $1 billion that Mr. Khodorkovsky and his associates are accused of misappropriating during the 1990s.
Mr. Rothschild is the British head of Europe’s wealthy and influential Rothschild family, and runs his own investment empire.
Khodorkovsky, reputed to be Russia’s richest man, was last week arrested by Russian prosecutors on charges of fraud and tax evasion. His imprisonment has triggered a trustee agreement he put in place with Rothschild a few months ago.
Russian oil mafioso Mikhail Khodorkovsky named former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Lord Rothschild to his Open Russia foundation when it was created in 2001. The British Mikhail Khodorkovsky Foundation Future of Russia Foundation hired an expert from the Royal Institute of International Relations, Chatham House, John Lof. The former NATO representative in Moscow is known for his tough stance towards Russia. The Future of Russia Foundation with assets of £ 14.5 million is supported by Mikhail Khodorkovsky's social and political projects - the Institute of Modern Russia *, Open Russia ** and the online media Open Media.
William Engdahl writes for the Voltaire Network long time back, January 5, 2011,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s real crime was not stealing Russia’s assets for a pittance in the bandit era of Yeltsin. His real crime is that he was a key part of a Western intelligence operation to dismantle and destroy what remains of Russia as a functioning state. When the facts are known the justice served on him is mild by comparison to US or UK standard treatment of those convicted of treason against the state. Obama’s torture prison at Guantánamo is merely one example of Washington’s double standard.
According to the politically correct sanitized account in Wikipedia, “Yukos Oil Company was a petroleum company in Russia which, until 2003, was controlled by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky…Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to prison…Yukos was one of the biggest and one of the most successful Russian companies in 2000-2003. In 2003, following a tax reassessment, the Russian government presented Yukos with a series of tax claims that amounted to $27 billion. As Yukos’s assets were frozen by the government at the same time, the company was not able to pay these tax demands. On August 1, 2006, a Russian court declared Yukos bankrupt. Most of Yukos’s assets were sold at low prices to oil companies owned by the Russian government. The Parliamentary Council of Europe has condemned Russia’s campaign against Yukos and its owners as manufactured for political reasons and a violation of human rights.”
If we dig a little deeper however we find a quite different case. As he stepped out of his private plane in Siberia in October 2003 Khodorkovsky was arrested. He was arrested, as Wikipedia correctly states, for tax crimes. What they did not say is that he at the tender age of 40 had risen to become the richest man in Russia worth some $15 billion by fraudulent acquisition of state assets during the lawless Yeltsin era. In an auction run by his own bank, Khodorkovsky paid $309 million for Yukos. In 2003 the same company was assessed as worth $45 billion, and not owing to Khodorkovsky’s management genius.
In 1998, Khodorkovsky had been let free in a US case where he was charged with helping launder $10 billion with his own bank and the Bank of New York. He had very influential friends in the US it appeared. The then head of the Republic National Bank of New York, Edmund Safra, was murdered some months later in his Monaco apartment reportedly from members of an alleged “Russian mafia” whom he had cheated in a drug money laundering scheme.
But there was more. Khodorkovsky built some impressive ties in the West. With his new billions in effect stolen from the Russian people, he made some powerful friends. He set up a foundation modeled on US billionaire George Soros’ Open Society, calling it the Open Russia Foundation. He invited two powerful Westerners to its board—Henry Kissinger and Jacob Lord Rothschild. Then he set about to develop ties with some of the most powerful circles in Washington where he was named to the Advisory Board of the secretive private equity firm, Carlyle Group where he attended board meetings with fellow advisors such as George H.W. Bush and James Baker III.
However, the real crime that landed Khodorkovsky behind Russian bars was the fact that he was in the middle of making a US-backed coup d’etat to capture the Russian presidency in planned 2004 Russian Duma elections. Khodorkovsky was in the process of using his enormous wealth to buy enough seats in the coming Duma elections that he could change Russian laws regarding ownership of oil in the ground and of pipelines transporting same. In addition he planned to directly challenge Putin and become Russian President. As part of the horse trade that won Putin the tacit support of the wealthy so-called Russian Oligarchs, Putin had extracted agreement that they be allowed to hold on to their wealth provided they repatriate a share back into Russia and provided they not interfere in domestic Russian politics with their wealth. Most oligarchs agreed, as did Khodorkovsky at the time. They remain established Russian businessmen. Khodorkovsky did not.
“mutual love of the arts“ indeed. Thank you for that good laugh.
If Putin was half the man people think he is, this guy would have been thrown into jail, just like the USA does with anyone they disagree with (Guantanamo etc)
I can't stand how big P talked years ago about how these assholes that stole from the people were still allowed to own it, as long as they paid taxes.
That's probably why he allowed wef morons to run his pharma plan with Sputnik v etc.