"As a result of investigative work, we managed to obtain new information and in light of this, it was decided on Dec. 11, 2015, to prosecute Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a defendant for... the organization of murder," Russia's powerful Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Investigators announced in June that they were reopening a criminal probe into the 1998 murder of Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of oil-producing Nefteyugansk city, saying that Khodorkovsky -- then the head of the now-defunct oil giant Yukos -- may have ordered the killing.
Former Yukos security chief, Alexei Pichugin, is already serving a life term for the mayor's murder and Sherlocks said Friday that "not one important decision was taken at Yukos without Khodorkovsky's order."
Khodorkovsky, who now lives in London, has claimed that the new probe into the mayor's murder was ordered personally by President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead....
Once Russia's richest man, he spent a decade in prison on charges of tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement, which he blames on a political vendetta by Putin.
In late 2013 he was unexpectedly released and flown out of the country after a presidential pardon. After intially pledging to stay out of politics, he has once again become an outspoken critic of Putin.