Yukos plays get out of jail card

13 April 2012

OWNERS of shares in Yukos, Russia's largest oil group, made a remarkable offer to the Kremlin - they will give up their £10bn of shares to get their boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky out of jail.

Leonid Nevzlin and his partners are ready to surrender stock in Group Menatep, which owns a majority stake in Yukos, to win freedom for the oil tycoon.

Khodorkovsky was arrested in October after ignoring warnings from President Vladimir Putin to stay out of politics.

He has been denied bail on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

'Free the hostages and we will be ready to talk about ceding the controlling stake,' said Nevzlin, who fled to Israel last year. 'Life and liberty are more valuable than shares.'

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in