Russian oil magnate Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky returned to court today in a billion-dollar fraud trial expected to end in the conviction of the politically ambitious opponent of President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Khodorkovsky, main owner of oil major YUKOS, could go to jail for 10 years if convicted over his role in the 1994 privatisation of a fertiliser firm and tax evasion charges.
He was brought with co-defendant Mr Platon Lebedev amid tight security to the Meshchansky court, where a hearing was to begin at 8 a.m. (Irish time). As in all criminal trials in Russia, the defendants will be held in a cage.
The highest-profile trial since the fall of communism marks a reckoning for the "oligarchs" who accumulated vast wealth and power in the helter-skelter privatisations of the 1990s.
Mr Khodorkovsky, who denied the charges when his trial opened last Wednesday, became Russia's richest man after snapping up YUKOS at a rock-bottom price under the "loans for shares" privatisation scheme of the Boris Yeltsin era.
Many believe it was his support for the liberal opposition and refusal to defer to Putin that led to his arrest last October and prosecution. Other plutocrats who stayed out of politics remained free.
The opening session of the trial was adjourned after a lawyer for the defence underwent eye surgery. Further procedural wrangling is likely before the court addresses the charges against Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev, another key YUKOS shareholder.