Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a wanted man again, with a warrant issued for his arrest two years after being released from jail. The 52-year-old who’d spent more than 10 years in prison on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement — after what he described as a politically-motivated trial as he fell out with Vladimir Putin — was freed in 2013 after a pardon from the Russian president.
A Russian court on Wednesday issued an international arrest warrant against the former oil tycoon, as Khodorkovsky is now accused of ordering the contract killing of Vladimir Petukhov, the former mayor of the Siberian town of Nefteyugansk, in 1998, Euronews reports. This comes a day after armed police raided the Moscow offices of Khodorkovsky’s pro-democracy movement Open Russia.
Khodorkovsky has denied the murder charges and Maria Logan, a spokeswoman quoted by ABC News, said he is currently based in London and is unlikely to turn himself in.
