RUSSIA: Jailed Russian billionaire Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky resigned as head of the huge Yukos oil firm yesterday, but said he was confident the company would survive a legal onslaught inspired by old KGB comrades of President Vladimir Putin.
Shares in Yukos climbed sharply after Russia's richest man, who is accused of $1 billion-worth of fraud and tax evasion, said he would quit the firm he captured for a relative pittance in a deeply murky privatisation in 1997.
"As a manager, I have to do all I can to pull our workforce safely out from under the blows that are being directed at me and my partners," Mr Khodorkovsky (40) said in a statement. "I am leaving the company."
Special agents boarded Mr Khodorkovsky's private jet at a Siberian airfield nine days ago and flew him back to Moscow to face charges. Two other top Yukos managers are charged with tax-evasion and fraud and a company security chief is accused of murder.
Shares in Russia's biggest oil company closed up 12 per cent yesterday, but were still 20 per cent off record highs achieved before Mr Khodorkovsky was seized. Most analysts say he is being targeted by "hawks" who followed Mr Putin from the KGB to the Kremlin and want to slash the wealth and influence of the so-called oligarchs who made billions in Russia's quick-fire sale of state assets in the 1990s.
The arrest of Mr Khodorkovsky, who riled the Kremlin by funding opposition parties and hinting at personal political ambitions, prompted the resignation of Mr Alexander Voloshin as presidential chief-of-staff last week, a move which commentators called the death knell for the liberals which Mr Putin inherited from Mr Boris Yeltsin.
Mr Voloshin's replacement, Mr Dmitry Medvedev, tried to calm investors on Sunday night by questioning the "legal effectiveness" of last week's seizure of 44 per cent of Yukos shares by the prosecutor general, a move which sent shares plunging.
Russia's finance minister, Mr Alexei Kudrin, also had soothing words for a rattled market yesterday, saying the departure of Mr Voloshin meant the end of Mr Yeltsin's "Byzantine era" and would be good for business.
"One individual court case cannot revoke all the positive changes in the economy and society," he said of Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest, insisting it would ultimately strengthen the rule of law in Russia, which the US State Department has said appears to be in danger.
Mr Kudrin also denied that former security service men wanted to annul the privatisations of the 1990s and claim some wealth for themselves.
"I've heard personally from [Mr Putin\] and clearly understand myself that this is not a redistribution of property and not a campaign against oligarchs," he said.
In a rebuke aimed at Mr Putin, Mr Khodorkovsky vowed to continue philanthropic work with his Open Russia Society - "to build an open and truly democratic society in Russia".
Financial analysts broadly welcomed his resignation as good for Yukos, but several thought it would not mark the end of the firm's tribulations.