Russia's Investigative Committee has informed Mikhail Khodorkovsky — an exiled former oil tycoon turned political opposition figure — that it will officially charge him on Friday in connection with the murder of a Russian mayor, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday.
Khodorkovsky wrote on Twitter that he received a formal notification to that effect. “They remembered that [they] needed to charge [me] first,” he said. On Monday his father received a subpoena summoning Khodorkovsky, who currently lives in Switzerland, for questioning on Friday “as a defendant.”
The subpoena described the latest charges as part of “Criminal case No. 18/35-03.” The number refers to a case against former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin, Open Russia coordinator Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr. said on his Facebook page Monday.
Pichugin is serving a life sentence for the 1998 killing of a former mayor of the oil town of Nefteyugansk, Vladimir Petukhov, and other murders. The ex-security chief and his supporters maintain his innocence.
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