“The employees of the Interior Ministry’s National Central Bureau of Interpol sent a request on February 3 of this year to Interpol’s Secretary General to place Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, suspected of grave crimes, to be placed on the [international] wanted list,” the Interior Ministry said in a press release.
Last December, a Russian court charged the former head of the now defunct Yukos oil company in absentia with organizing the murder of a mayor in a Siberian town.
In 1998, Nefteyugansk Mayor Vladimir Petukhov was shot dead on the way to his office. In 2007, Alexei Pichugin, a former Yukos security head, was convicted of planning the mayor's killing.
Last month, witnesses in the murder case testified at a Moscow city court that Khodorkovsky was complicit in the shooting of Petukhov, according to a state-appointed lawyer representing the tycoon.
Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003, and spent 10 years in prison for fraud and tax evasion before being pardoned by President Vladimir Putin. Following his release, he was issued a three-month Schengen visa by Switzerland and later a residence permit.
The businessman has so far refused to cooperate with Russian law enforcement agencies, stating that he is not willing to take part in another criminal trial against him in Russia.
