[Leonid Nevzlin]

NEWS
IN BRIEF — probably not in your own national newspaper –
Leonid Nevzlin, biggest
Yukos shareholder not yet in jail, has been granted Israeli citizenship, raising eyebrows even in Jerusalem over the haste in which it was done.
[source]
Fact: Nevzlin resigned from Yukos to head the Russian Jewish
Congress. [biography]

Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr.
[sic]
Rothschild, 67, under a “previously
unknown arrangement” designed to take
effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky
could no longer “act as a beneficiary” of
the shares, it said.

[Jacob Rothschild]Mr.
Khodorkovsky, 40, whom Russian authorities arrested at gunpoint and jailed pending further investigation last week, was said by the Sunday Times to have made the arrangement with Mr. Rothschild when he realized he was facing arrest.

Mr. Rothschild (left) now controls the voting rights on a stake in
Yukos worth almost $13.5 billion, the newspaper said in a dispatch from
Moscow.

Mr. Khodorkovsky owns 4 percent of
Yukos directly and 22 percent through a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to Russian analysts.

From the
figures reported in the Sunday
Times, it appeared Mr. Rothschild
had received control of all Mr.
Khodorkovsky’s shares.

The two have known each other for years
“through their mutual love of the arts” and their positions as directors of the Open Russia
Foundation, Yukos’ philanthropic branch, it said.

Russian authorities Thursday froze billions of dollars of shares held by Mr.
Khodorkovsky and his top lieutenants in
Yukos — throwing control of the country’s largest oil company into limbo and causing frenzied selling on financial markets.

Russian prosecutors said owners of the shares are still entitled to dividends and retain voting rights, but can no longer sell their stakes.

They said the freeze was necessary as collateral for the $1 billion that Mr.
Khodorkovsky and his associates are accused of misappropriating during the
1990s.

Mr. Rothschild is the British head of
Europe’s wealthy and influential Rothschild family, and runs his own investment empire.

Russia:
The Guilty Men

[Berezovsky]

Berezovsky

[Gusinksy]

Gusinksy

[Khodorsky]

Khodorkovsky

[Abramovich]

Abramovich

… on
the, ahem, oligarchs
Greek
court rejects Gusinsky
extradition
Russian
fraudster Boris Berezovsky granted
asylum by Tony Blair’s
government
Letter
Reuters
reports that The World Jewish Congress
asked Interpol not to arrest Jewish
Russian media magnate Vladimir
Gusinsky
Apr 25, 2001:

href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1295963.stm&#8221 target=”_blank”>Russian
media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky has
flown from Spain to Israel, apparently
in a new bid to escape the clutches of
Moscow prosecutors
Outrage in Berlin
Conservative
German politician claims Jews are “a
Race of Perpetrators”
Forward:
Kremlin Targets Jewish Tycoons in War
on Critics
First
Russian International

Corporate
Philanthropic
Foundation
(of Khodorkovsky and Rothschild): “I am
launching the Foundation [First
Russian International Corporate
Philanthropic Foundation] in London
to highlight the international nature
of the Foundation’s aims and to create
an infrastructure from which the next
generation of Russia’s leaders will
emerge.”