He’s been in prison for the crime of turning a crumbling set of mismanaged assets into one of the world’s best managed and most wealth-productive oil firms, being the first Russian business tycoon to open the board of directors to outside directors, being the first to create one set of books (rather than three or four), being the first to open those books to outside auditors, and, of course, funding NGOs that were independent and sometimes critical of the holders of state power. He was jailed and his firm was broken up and distributed to the Siloviki in a transparently untransparent and illegal process. It looked like he might be released in 2008 or 2009; don’t count on it, now that his lawyers have been called to the remote Siberian town of Chita to answer to another round of new charges: “money laundering.” (From what I have heard, it seems that some of that “money laundering” was about giving money to independent charities, which can’t be tolerated in an authoritarian and paternalist welfare state.)
This is ‘sending the message’ that no competition with the authorities will be tolerated and that there are no limits to the punishments.