MOSCOW (Sputnik) — A new case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the defunct Yukos oil company, is purely criminal and has nothing to do with economic issues, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
"The charges pressed by our investigators are not economy-related this time, they are linked to his potential involvement in a murder, and therefore it is a purely criminal case," Peskov told reporters in a conference call.
Earlier in the day, Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said that Khodorkovsky had been placed under arrest in absentia and put on the international wanted list in connection with the murder of the mayor of the Siberian city of Nefteyugansk, Vladimir Petukhov, in 1998.
