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• Friday, December 1, 2006 11:55 PM

  Here's the last connection from Wikipedia

  Bank Menatep provided the foundation for Khodorkovsky's bidding for Yukos in 1995 in the infamous "loans-for-shares" scheme. In this manipulation, a small group of individuals well connected to government structures were handed valuable pieces of state property in return for cash "loans" (which in many cases were funded by the bank accounts of the state bank). One purpose of this operation was to help Boris Yeltsin's reelection in 1996. Khodorkovsky paid a small price of 350 million dollars for Yukos, considering that approximately $1.5 billion USD has been spent purchasing the assets that now make up Yukos, with a market capitalisation of $31 billion USD. He claims that the depressed value of the company came from widespread fears that the Communists would win the next legislative election and seize it back.

  Widespread fears that we know from "Spinning Boris" were helped along by the two Republican consultants hired by the campaign organizers, one of whom was Khodorkovsky's partner Nevzlin.

  Maybe they should have titled that movie "Spinning Yukos."

  At first I thought it was a wild idea to propose that Khodorkovsky would even think he could influence the next election and get his company back by killing Litvinenko and maybe even Politkovskaya and making it look like Putin was to blame.

  But look at how these people operate. Such a maneuver would be almost expected from them.

  These murders make Putin look like a Stalinist. But making Zyuganov look like a Stalinist was how they got Yukos so cheaply in the first place.

  —Patricia Schwarz
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