The first former senior manager of the Yukos oil company to be released from prison has told how he attempted to slice open his stomach in a desperate attempt to get a jail transfer.

In his first interview since his release on February 15 after seven years in jail, Vladimir Pereverzin, the former deputy head of the oil major’s structured finance division, told of a life of arbitrary reprisals and threats to his life.

In comments that could cast light on conditions faced by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time Yukos owner and Russia’s richest man, Mr Pereverzin described how his life became a nightmare after his arrest in December 2004.

The case against Mr Pereverzin and four other senior managers in the company accused them of facilitating the theft of almost all the oil Yukos produced. It also formed the basis for a second set of charges against Mr Khodorkovsky, extending his prison sentence to 2017.

“When you cross through the gates of a prison colony you enter the 1930s,” Mr Pereverzin said. “We have a country of legal mayhem, where official policies lead to lies and hypocrisy and arbitrary rules. You can’t consider that this is a civilised, modern country when these things go on just 100kms from Moscow.”

Read the full version of the article on The Financial Times.