A former Communist Youth League leader, Mikhail Khodorkovsky personified Russia's new class of tycoons in the 1990s who converted ambition and contacts into vast wealth as the Soviet economy lurched toward capitalism. He started his first business as a student in the late 1980s.
On Thursday, he became the first of the big 1990s tycoons to be sentenced to a long prison term when a Moscow court ordered him held until 2017 on a second conviction.
Two decades earlier, Khodorkovsky had been on the forefront of the new capitalist class. By the early 1990s, his Bank Menatep was one of the largest, earning millions from currency speculation as the ruble plunged and inflation soared.
Menatep plowed the proceeds into buying companies at knock-down prices in the government's mass-privatization program. It won control of Yukos in 1995 in an auction where it faced no competition, one of the controversial loans-for-shares deals that gave some of Russia's richest assets to the oligarchs at a fraction of their value.
He almost lost control of the company in Russia's 1998 financial crisis. Workers angry at not being paid stormed the company's Siberian offices. In Moscow, Khodorkovsky fought off creditors and minority shareholders who accused him of trying to strip the company's assets and of siphoning cash from its units -- an allegation that prosecutors picked up in his latest trial.
By the end of the 1990s, Khodorkovsky had become the epitome "of everything that was wrong with Russian business," according to a former adviser.
But he also had full control of Yukos, his prize asset. He realized that it would be far more valuable to him if he turned it into an investor darling and sold out to a foreign oil giant, according to people who worked with him at the time.
"The metamorphosis from robber baron to business statesmen was achieved with lightning speed," then-US Senator Tom Lantos, who met Khodorkovsky around that time, said later.
Khodorkovsky also raised his political profile, cultivating contacts in Washington and championing closer ties between the two countries. He spoke out on foreign policy, criticizing then-President Vladimir Putin's opposition to the US-led war in Iraq.
In private, he pushed for even more influence.
He and other Yukos shareholders spent millions of dollars to fund friendly candidates running in the December, 2003, parliamentary elections, according to people familiar with the efforts.
He told advisers and diplomats that he hoped to win as much a third of the seats in parliament, allowing him to block Kremlin initiatives. He spoke openly about the idea of strengthening the role of the parliament and weakening the presidency. He also said he planned to retire in 2007 - just before Putin would be forced to give up the presidency by term limits. "Those conversations cost him dearly," said one legislator who discussed the issues with him.
Khodorkovsky's moves violated the informal deal that Putin had offered the oligarchs when he came to office in 2000. If the tycoons didn't challenge the Kremlin's control of politics, the authorities wouldn't question how they had earned their fortunes, according to people familiar with the discussions.
By 2003, two other oligarchs who had defied the Kremlin had fled into exile, largely stripped of their assets.
But Khodorkovsky remained defiant, even after his partner, Platon Lebedev, was arrested in the summer of 2003. Three other billionaires met with him later that summer in Moscow to tell him he was breaking the informal rules and putting them all at risk, according to several participants. He brushed off the concerns, saying he was "hedging his political risks."
He also thought his support in Washington would provide some insurance with the Kremlin. Adding to the US ties, he was closing in on a deal to sell a big stake in Yukos to Exxon Mobil Corp., according to people close to the talks. He told associates he thought Putin was "weak and indecisive," several former colleagues said. He publicly dared the Kremlin to arrest him.
