Prigovor.ru: For more than a year, the team of Arkady Mamontov has dissected the longstanding activities of Mikhail Khodorkovsky: honor, conscience and love to Motherland have not been found
On November 29, 2025, on the TV channel ‘Rossiya-24’ went on air a two-part documentary-investigation of the journalist Arkady Mamontov entitled ‘Anatomy of Khodorkovsky’. As is understood from the title, this is about the shady activity of ‘foreign agents’ steward’, former head of the oil company Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who did a term in prison for almost 11 years for multibillion fraud and then pardoned by the president on December 20, 2013, on the eve of the Olympic Games in the Russian town Sochi.
Arkady Mamontov and his creative team made a great and careful work, with lots of facts being shown on air for the first time. During these two parts, a criminal portrait of Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been painted in detail and persuasively, which is being formed, like a mosaics, from a bulk of details – unique archive documents, pages of criminal files previously unknown by general public. As well as from numerous testimonies of real participants of events in those years, both victims of crimes and criminals who have served their time in jail.
For instance, Arkady Mamontov proved something that had been only supposed before that – Mikhail Khodorkovsky was, in fact, a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The Journalist found in archives the File No 471 of May 23 – June 13, 1985 of Sverdlovsky District Committee of Moscow pertaining to adoption to member of the Party of Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, candidate for membership of the Party from April 1984, candidate’s card No 06837283, Party organization of the D.I. Mendeleyev Moscow Chemical-Technological Institute.
“I ask the party organization to admit me as member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I understand the related responsibility and I am ready to give all my strength to the cause of the party in the struggle for communism. I have studies the Charter and Program of the CPSU, I recognize it and commit myself to fulfill it’, wrote Mikhail Khodorkovsky in his application form.
At that time, there were two types of communists – real, sincere and temporizers or opportunists who used their membership of the CPSU for the sake of career and profit. Mikhail Khodorkovsky belonged to the second group, was one those who were ready to commit the most dreadful crimes in order to get 300% of benefit.
By the way, in the film by Arkady Mamontov there are at once several unique episodes. He managed to find and talk to the contract killers who had made dirty work for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partner Leonid Nevzlin*. It turned out that all these killers have already fulfilled their sentences and got out of jail. In fact, killers can also be afraid. In fact, the former killers now at large are still afraid of their masters from the oil company Yukos.
Yevgeny Reshetnikov, served 19 years in jail for the killing of Vladimir Petukhov as well as for two attempted murders of Rybin
Gennady Shevtsov (Tsigelnik), served 20 years for killing of Vladimir Petukhov as well as for two attempted murders of Yevgeny Rybin
Vladimir Shapiro, spent 19 years in jail for the murder of Valentina Korneyeva and accessory in the killing of Vladimir Petukhov
Oleg Smirnov, former chauffeur and friend of Sergey Gorin, supervisor of the band of contract murderers who was killed together with his wife as dangerous witnesses ready to start to talk
In this film, direct participants tell about these financial schemes of Yukos, namely Arkady Zakharov, former director of the CJSC ‘Laguna’ (the very same shell-firm what participated in the rapacious loans-for-shares auction sales) as well as Gitas Anilionis who registered for Mikhail Khodorkovsky numerous offshore companies.
The shooting of the film took place in Moscow, Tambov, Nefteyugansk. Yet, the investigation happens to be really an international one as it goes far beyond the frontiers of our country. The geography of the film is as follows – Poland, United States, Cyprus, and the Netherlands.
In Warsaw, for instance, the reporters of the ‘Studio of Arkady Mamontov’ managed to use a hidden camera at the closed get-together, ‘for members only’, at the meeting of Mikhail Khodorkovsky with the ‘diaspora’, to be more precise, with fugitive foreign agents and oppositionists of different tinge and various types of squabbling. The authors, however, kept the intrigue, and only a little part of the footage made in Poland was used in the film.
In the United States – the film crew managed to go to Miami and to visit the main office of Yukos’ swindlers ‘Quadrum’. Through this company, as well by means of money, ‘siphoned off’ from Russia and in the interests of the criminals from Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners – bought up, repurchased, resold of real estate property and other assets to the tune of around 2 billion dollars.
We would like to remind our readers that the group of companies ‘Quadrum’ is working according to a scheme – to buy a derelict asset on the cheap, sort it out and sell, but at a higher price. On exit, you have rather ‘clean’ money, if, of course, you don’t look into the past of the beneficiaries of the project like Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Part of the money goes for development of business, and another part goes for subversive work against Russia.
And, yes, managers of Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky (aka MBKh), according to the investigators from the film crew, took care of American pensioners having created for them a big boarding guest house in the United States for elderly people. The authors of the film managed to be present at the doors open day of this pleasing to God establishment, to study the apartments from within, to find out the pricing schedule for potential guests – 6000 dollars one-off fee, then 3800 dollars and more a month. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of course, was not intended to build such apartment complexes in Russia instead of stealing and transferring money to the West. Still, there is nothing to be surprised of. Historically, the shareholders of the oil company Yukos, according to Mikhail Khodorkovsky and captured on the archive video of 2003, were five American States and pension fund of the Pentagon.
Cyprus (Nicosia). In this sunny country, the creative team of Arkady Mamontov wanted badly to communicate with representatives of the two offshore companies through which the swindlers from Yukos had decided to rob Russian once more to the amount of 50 billion dollars. These are the already well known in the whole world trash holes – ‘Hulley Enterprises Itd’ and ‘Veteran Petroleum Ltd’. They, as is known, were controlled by the gang of Nevzlin-Khodorkovsky, although in Russia and in international courts they tried to pass off as ‘foreign investors’.
The reporters followed the addresses of these ‘investors’ and were in the least surprised that the companies were not present at the addresses presented, by the way, in international courts where these Yukos’ ‘dumpsters’ demand from Russia now more than 65 billion dollars.
Moreover, the authors of the film found out that both Cyprus firms, created in the interest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his grouping – one in 1997 and the other in in 2001 – were simultaneously liquidated in September 2023. This is confirmed also by the documents from Cyprus commercial Registry. From all appearances, the offshores belonging to Nevzlin-Khodorkovsky, trying to torpedo Russia at arbitrages, are now feeling themselves more comfortable in less transparent ‘havens’, like Gibraltar.
The Netherlands takes in the film-investigation a special place, as it’s in the Netherlands that were carried out litigations provoked by the swindlers against Russia. So, the documentarists managed to take an interview with Robert Dekker, a former officer of the financial intelligence agency of the Netherlands. He, within the framework of his duties, observed financial flows of the Eastern Europe and Russia, trying to expose, in accordance to specific methods, all kinds of abnormal payments, i.e. all that is called money laundering.
At the beginning of the ‘zero years’, in view of Robert Dekker came financial flows of Russian bankers and oligarchs. The investigator Dekker paid attention to the fact how Russian bankers, first of all, the bank ‘Menatep’ of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, were impudently pumping up money from Russia, by dozens of millions.
Robert Dekker, using the principle ‘follow the money’ established that Mikhail Khodorkovsky and financial organizations under his control are closely connected with American banks, with shadowy managers who help to lower taxes and to hide money from tax authorities in murky jurisdictions. According to Robert Dekkers, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was an asset of Wester secret services.
‘Khodorkovsky wanted to sell shares to ExxonMobil or, just imagine this, to Griffits, former employee of the State Department… Thus, the Khodorkovsky case shows that he is not only a criminal, white collar, who robbed Russia, but also an asset of Western curators who wanted to gain control over oil fields of your country’, said Robert Dekker speaking with the authors of the film ‘Anatomy of Khodorkovsky’.
The film of Arkady Mamontoy contains a detailed report also about political ambitions of the former oil oligarch. He planned to carry out in Russia a ‘parliamentary coup’ and to become a ruling prime minister having made president a nominal figure.
Being in cahoots with London and Washington, Khodorkovsky M.B. decided in 2003-2004 to create in Russia a ‘parliamentary republic’ contrary to the established political system in the country. Khodorkovsky’s gang was being prepared to buy up the whole Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation by way of concluding individual contracts with deputies and senators.
In order to pull off this operation it was necessary to change the Federal Law on government of the Russian Federation, reminded the journalist-investigator Sergey Sokolov in the film ‘Anatomies of Khodorkovsky’. ‘In order to change the law, they, first, had [to buy] 226 voices – this is a majority in the State Duma, but it was required to have a steady majority – they had to buy up to 300 deputies. But there is also the Federation Council and this is 134 persons. In principle, they allocated from 700 million up to 1 billion dollars for the oligarch coup’, found out Sergey Sokolov.
It was important to remember this as Mikhail Khodorkovsky has in store also in 2025 a renewed and more radical plan of creating a ‘parliamentary republic’ – this time on the basis of the ‘Russia Antiwar Committee’** created by British curators where it was formulated ‘the liquidation of the regime with the use of force or readiness to use force’.
The difference from previous years consists, perhaps, in one more circumstance. Khodorkovsky and his curators are acting openly and impudently. As a result, he, on rather sound basis, has become a defendant in a criminal case pursuant to Article 278 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Forcible Seizure of Power or Forcible Retention of Power) and Article 205.4, Paragraphs 1 and 2, of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (‘Organization of a Terrorist Community and Participation Therein’).
In the film of Arkady Mamontov there are lots of other interesting and dramatic details, documents, exclusive footages. And the documental investigation ‘Anatomy of Khodorkovsky’ is just one of the works to which, like to a broad dossier on the past not only of the swindler Khodorkovsky but also on Russia caught in the flow of events, will surely turn investigators, authors, and, sure enough, fans of the genre – the genre of journalistic investigations.
Author: Buba Filin
See the Russian version at: «Анатомия Ходорковского*»: член КПСС, олигарх, мошенник, иноагент, предатель, террорист»
Also on this subject:
‘Nevzlin – organizer of extremely serious crimes involving death of five persons’. The website FLB.ru for the first time publishes the whole text of the judgment of the Moscow City Court against the ordering customer and organizer of serial murders, billionaire from Yukos Leonid Nevzlin*. Case No 2-38/08 of 01.08.2008.
* Foreign agents, extremists; ** Extremist terrorist undesirable organizations
* Khodorkovsky Mikhail Borisovich, born 26.06.1963, Identification Number of a Taxpayer (INN) 770200035117, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 168-196-008 95 – on 20.05.2022 was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as physical person fulfilling function of a foreign agent. Included in the Registry of foreign agents with No 389. In 2015, Russia included Khodorkovsky in an international wanted list in connection with the case of his involvement in the murder of the mayor of the town Nefteyugansk Vladimir Petukhov and attempted murder of the entrepreneur Yevgeny Rybin. Apart from that, a criminal case is opened against Mikhail Khodorkovsky in accordance with Article 205.2 Paragraph 2 of the Criminal Coder of the Russian Federation (Public Calls to Carry out Terrorist Activities). He was included, on November 19, 2025, by the agency Rosfinmonitoring in the Russian list of terrorists and extremists;
**Russia Antiwar Committee’ – organization whose activities are acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by the Ruling of the Office of the Prosecutor General of 11.01.2024.The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case in accordance with Article 278 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Forcible Seizure of Power and Forcible Retention of Power) as well as in accordance with Article 205.4 of the CC of the RF, Paragraphs 1 and 2 (Organization of a Terrorist Community and Participation Therein);
* Nevzlin Leonid Borisovich, born 21.09.1959, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 094-463-07079 – on 23.06.2023 included into the Registry of foreign agents with No 622. On August 1, 2008, as ordering customer of five murders and six attempted murders was sentenced in absentia to life-long prison imprisonment. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) based on the results of studying Nevzlin’s complaint in 2022, pointed out that it had found no ‘Court’s bias in Russia’.
