“Khodorkovski, LE PRISONNIER du Silence,” by Valery Paniouchkine

Ten years after the fall communism, Mikhail Khodorkovsky became the richest man in Russia by building the Yukos oil company. Today, he is serving nine years in a penal colony deep in Siberia.  Many people who are convinced that Khodorkovsky’s wealth was procured during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, feel that the jail term serves him right.  The journalist Valery Paniouchkine similarly held this belief, at least until 2005, when his curiosity drove him to visit Khodorkovsky in prison and discover what was behind his story.  What he found was dramatically different than he could have expected.