About Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, sometimes known by his initials MBK, is an exiled Russian businessman, oligarch, and opposition activist, now residing in London. In 2003, Khodorkovsky was believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, with a fortune estimated to be worth $15 billion, and was ranked 16th on Forbes list of billionaires. He had worked his way up the Komsomol apparatus, during the Soviet years, and started several businesses during the period of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s. In 1989, he became Chairman of the Board of Bank Menatep, which he founded. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the mid-1990s, he accumulated considerable wealth by obtaining control of a number of Siberian oil fields unified under the name Yukos, one of the major companies to emerge from the privatization of state assets during the 1990s. In 2001, Khodorkovsky founded Open Russia, a reform-minded organization intending to "build and strengthen civil society" in the country. In response to his first application, which concerned events from 2003 to 2005, the court found that several violations were committed by the Russian authorities in their treatment of Khodorkovsky. Mikhail became a fervent Communist and Soviet patriot, a member of a species that had seemed all but extinct." The young Khodorkovsky was ambitious and received excellent grades.
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