RUSSIA: Exactly a month after he was spectacularly seized at gunpoint on his private jet, Russia's richest man was yesterday handed details of evidence prosecutors intend to use to prove that he committed massive fraud and tax evasion.
But hopes that oil baron Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky may have harboured of a swift trial were soon dashed by the sheer weight of material levelled against him - some 200 volumes of legal documents.
Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest by special agents at a Siberian airfield sent stock in his Yukos oil firm plunging and threw the Russian stock market into a tailspin, amid fears of a Kremlin onslaught against the men who became billionaires in the shady privatisations of the 1990s and who control huge swathes of the economy.
"Today, in the presence of his lawyer, Khodorkovsky was informed of the end of the preliminary investigation into his criminal case," Ms Natalya Vishnyakova, a spokeswoman for Russia's prosecutor general, told NTV television.
"Everything now depends on Khodorkovsky and his lawyers. As soon as they finish going through the case materials - and this is around 200 volumes - the case will be sent to court for consideration." She said Mr Platon Lebedev, another major Yukos shareholder who is charged with embezzlement, was still studying his 150-page case three months after he received it.
Supporters say Mr Khodorkovsky is being victimised by President Vladimir Putin's hardline political and security service allies for criticising the Kremlin, funding opposition parties and hinting at his own presidential ambitions.
He already appeared to have no chance of being free for next month's parliamentary elections, and now looks like he may still be in detention during a presidential poll in March.
After rallying vehemently to his cause, many top Russian businessmen have distanced themselves from Mr Khodorkovsky, and most people here have little sympathy for one of the men who made fortunes from post-Soviet chaos that brought poverty to millions.