Proclaimed Russia's richest man just six years ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is currently in jail for fraud and tax evasion. He is due for release next year, but has now been charged with stealing two billion barrels of oil between 1998 and 2003. If the court finds the former oil magnate guilty when it issues its verdict on 27 December - a date possibly chosen to coincide with the festive season - his current eight-year jail term could be extended until 2017. His parents say their son is the victim of a personal vendetta by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Children can be heard singing in the gym, their voices echoing down the long corridors of the Korallovo school, about 50 kilometres outside Moscow. The school building is located in a rolling, snow-covered field at the edge of a forest. The boarding school for disadvantaged children is the brain child of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (1963).

"He wanted this so bad,’’ says his mother, Marina Khodorkovskaya, one of the driving forces behind the school. "He bought that field. We wanted to build an additional school. This one is for 220 students. We wanted to build another for 500 students, plus accommodation. It could all have been built by now.’’

Impeccable
Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 threw a spanner in the works. At the time, the oil magnate was still the richest man in the country and his oil company Yukos enjoyed an impeccable reputation. Khodorkovsky dreamt of making Yukos the most transparent company in Russia, and the country’s first multinational. He also invested in education and supported various opposition parties. It all rubbed the Kremlin the wrong way. Khodorkovsky broke an unwritten rule that Russia’s rich should never become involved in politics.

The results were not long in coming. The oil magnate was arrested at a Siberian airport by a heavily armed police unit. The charges were massive fraud and tax evasion. Right from the start, it was clear that Khodorkovsky’s company, just like countless others, had made clever use of loopholes in the law to minimize its tax payments. The fact that only Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were put on trial was proof of the political nature of the trial. The two businessmen were sentenced to eight years in prison. Yukos was dismantled and most of its assets ended up in the hands of the state via a series of shady transactions.

His parents have been running the Korallovo school ever since. Most of the 170 children attending the school have a difficult background: some are survivors of the 2004 Beslan hostage drama, others the children of Russian soldiers killed in action and other orphans. The state has seized the school and all its assets. The tax authorities have imposed hefty tax assessments on the families of children who were allowed to attend the school free of charge. Marina Khodorkovskaya says the harassment started after Yukos was dismantled.

Absurdist
Over the past two years, she and her husband Boris have attended the trial of their son and Platon Lebedev as often as they could. An absurdist trial, in which the two accused are charged with embezzling Yukos’ total oil revenues over a five-year period. Most of the witnesses, including both former and incumbent ministers, have testified that this is impossible. Yukos has always met its supply obligations, to the full satisfaction of all clients. The charges also contradict the ruling in the first trial. If Khodorkovsky and Lebedev stole all Yukos’ oil, no taxes could ever have been paid, but they were.

Marina Khodorkovskaya has no illusions about the outcome of the second trial. “Miracles only happen in fairy tales, and the logic of events gives no reason to believe in them.” Father Boris Khodorkovsky adds: ,,Hope dies hard.”

The public prosecutor is seeking a 14-year sentence against the two accused. If acquitted, they would be released next year, ahead of the next parliamentary and presidential elections.

Fresh air
The trial has meant Marina Khodorkovskaya is seeing more of her son than when he was still in a Siberian penal colony. “He’s got back some colour on his cheeks and he has gained some weight. However, he gets almost no fresh air in Moscow. During the trial, he was not allowed to take walks and was served only one meal a day. They were woken up in the morning and frisked extensively. Afterward they drove through the traffic jams to the court house. And the same thing happened at night, only in reverse order.’’

Nevertheless, Khodorkovsky came across as cheerful, focused, and self-assured during his trial. “He is thinking about the future”, his mother says. “He is making plans, he keeps asking for books. Strangely enough, no restrictions have been imposed in terms of reading material. However, I do believe they read everything he writes. He is aware of everything that is going on. Sometimes when we meet, it is he who brings me up to speed.”

KGB
Marina Khodorkovskaya and her husband are convinced that their son has become the victim of a personal vendetta by the then president Vladimir Putin. It came as no surprise to her. "When a former KGB man rose to power, I had no illusions whatsoever about what would happen to the country. It is a terrible organisation. It is a disaster for our country and a disaster for our people.''