Mikhail Khodorkovsky Urges David Cameron To Confront Kremlin On Human Rights

Russia's most famous prisoner of conscience has spoken out from behind bars to urge David Cameron to confront the Kremlin on human rights issues when the Prime Minister visits Russia next week.












Mikhail Khodorkovsy, the former head of the Yukos oil company.

In written comments passed to The Daily Telegraph from his prison in northern Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky said Mr Cameron should use the fact that top Russian politicians bank, own property, and educate their children in the UK to pressure the Kremlin into becoming "a modern European state."

"I would hope that the British Prime Minister will directly raise questions of corruption and the judicial system in Russia with President (Dmitry) Medvedev," the 48-year-old oligarch-turned-political prisoner wrote.

"The UK could let Russia understand that a country with such widespread corruption, the only G8 country where there are political prisoners, cannot be a fully-fledged and all-round partner."

His mother, Marina Khodorkovskaya, went even further. In an interview, she urged Mr Cameron to deny entry to Russian officials involved in her son's case and to freeze their UK bank accounts.

Mr Cameron is due to make a flying visit to Moscow on Monday during which he is expected to meet Mr Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, the prime minister.

He will be the first British leader to visit Russia since Tony Blair five years ago, and the first since the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy and Kremlin critic, in central London.

The Prime Minister is aware of Mr Khodorkovsky's fate which has become emblematic of Russia's heavily politicised and selective justice system.

Designated as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, the former oil tycoon was Russia's richest man before he had a spectacular falling out with Mr Putin in 2003 over business and politics.

Arrested by masked men on an icy Siberian runway in his private jet that same year, he was later found guilty of fraud and given an eight year jail term after a trial that was widely viewed in the West as politically-motivated.

He spent much of that time in a grim Soviet-style labour camp 3,000 miles east of Moscow near China.

Yukos, his oil company, was swallowed up by the Kremlin while he languished behind bars, and in a second trial last year he was sentenced to a further six years in jail after being found guilty of the surreal charge of stealing oil from own company.

In his written comments from his jail in northern Russia, Mr Khodorkovsky said he wanted his own case to be a warning to British companies considering investing in Russia.

"It will be difficult for anyone to expect British companies to do serious business in Russia whilst entrepreneurs are factually subjected to a bureaucratic racket," he wrote.

Although Russia and the UK do in fact enjoy strong business links, political relations have stalled over differences on key foreign policy, security, business and rights issues.

Companies in the West are keen to tap into Russia's status as the world's biggest energy exporter but Russia's liberal opposition argues that Western politicians such as Mr Cameron need to keep reminding the Kremlin it must enact real democratic reforms if it wants large-scale investment.

Mr Khodorkovsky said he thought the UK could start by withholding the transfer of technology necessary for Russia's modernisation until the Kremlin changed course politically. He claimed that the UK had real clout with Russia.

"There is no question that such leverage does exist," he wrote. "The most influential people in Russia, those who in large measure determine the image and the fate of the country today, have vast business and personal interests in the UK. This applies also to a series of significant representatives of Vladimir Putin's team."

Speaking at a school outside Moscow that Mr Khodorkovsky originally set up for orphans, his mother Marina, 77, said she wanted Mr Cameron to raise her son's case with the Kremlin.

But she said she was looking for more that just rhetoric. "Words need to be backed with action," she said, urging the UK to impose visa and financial sanctions on Russian officials such as judges and prosecutors involved in her son's case.

"It is realistic and it would have an effect," she argued. "If the people in the second echelon of power beneath Putin understand that the higher-ups cannot protect them they will soon forget their loyalty to the system."

Clear-eyed despite her advanced years, she said that she feared that her son would not be released for as long as Mr Putin wielded influence in Russia. The Russian prime minister bore her son a personal grudge for publicly cutting across his political and business interests, she insisted.

"My aim is to live long enough to see my son freed," she said as tears formed in her eyes. "But I understand that the chances are getting less and less as I get older and older."

RAF Flies £140m Unfrozen Cash Assets To Libya

The RAF has flown £140m of Libyan banknotes (280m Libyan dinars) to Libya after an assets freeze aimed at Col Muammar Gaddafi was lifted.









People rushed to get cash from their accounts after the Libyan banks reopened on Tuesday.

The cash, printed in the UK, is the first tranche of £950m that will be handed to Libya's Central Bank.

A Whitehall official said the money should be available for cash machines and banks in Libya very quickly.

Meanwhile, the BBC has learned that David Cameron set up a unit to block fuel supplies to Col Gaddafi's forces.

The secret "Libya oil cell" also ensured that petrol and diesel continued to get through to the rebels in the east, BBC deputy political editor James Landale said.

The Whitehall-based unit was made up of a handful of civil servants, ministers and military figures.

"If you didn't have the fuel, you couldn't win the war"

Whitehall source

It played a crucial role in starving the regime's war effort of fuel while making sure that the rebels could continue taking the fight to Gaddafi, Whitehall officials told our correspondent.


Our correspondent said the unit was the idea of International Development Minister Alan Duncan. He was unavailable for comment on Wednesday evening.

The former oil trader convinced the Mr Cameron in April that part of the solution to the conflict lay in oil, our correspondent said.

One Whitehall source said: "If you didn't have the fuel, you couldn't win the war. So our aim was to starve the west of fuel and make sure the rebels could keep going.

"Gaddafi had lots of crude but he couldn't refine it. So he had to rely on imported fuel. And we turned off that tap."

The unit was established in the Foreign Office and was initially headed by a senior admiral, and later by a senior government official.

The operation gathered intelligence about oil and fuel movements, and information was passed to the government and Nato.
'Britain's commitment'

The release of the Libyan currency came following a decision by the United Nations sanctions committee in New York.

The official said the cash delivery, worth $1.55bn, should make it possible to pay many public sector workers, including nurses, doctors, teachers and police officers, over the Eid holiday.

Many of those dependent on government salaries have not been paid for a number of months.

The money will also be used to provide aid for refugees displaced by the conflict and to pay for medicine and food supplies.

The funds were frozen in February when the uprising in Libya started.

The move comes on the eve of a major international conference on the future of Libya to be held in Paris on Thursday, chaired jointly by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the UK prime minister.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was "delighted" the delivery to the Central Bank in Benghazi had been completed.

"Returning money to the Libyan people is part of our commitment to help the National Transitional Council rebuild Libya and help create a country where the legitimate needs and aspirations of the Libyan people can be met," said Mr Hague.

He added further deliveries of the remaining funds would be made shortly.
Ship held

Germany has also asked for agreement to release about 1bn euros (£900m) in seized assets, while France wants to unfreeze about 5bn euros (£4.4bn) to help pay for humanitarian aid and keep essential services going in Libya.

Last week, the UN agreed to a US request to unblock $1.5bn (£1bn) in frozen Libyan assets.

In March, a ship carrying Libyan currency worth £100m was impounded.

The Home Office said the ship was intercepted by UK authorities after heading back to British waters following an aborted attempt to dock at Libya's capital, Tripoli.

The money, which was printed in north-east England, was held at Harwich, Essex.

Tory Minister Alan Duncan's Links To Murky Fuel Trade

Under-fire Tory minister Alan Duncan was facing mounting pressure yesterday over his secret role in a $1billion Libyan oil deal for an old friend.













The minister in the Department for International Development covertly brokered the lucrative deal between oil firm Vitol and rebels.

Last night it emerged Mr Duncan was once on the company’s payroll, pocketing £1,750 a day.

His close links with Vitol and its chief Ian Taylor came under the microscope over the deal to cut off the fuel supply to Colonel Gaddafi’s troops and land huge profits for Vitol.

We also learned Tory donor Mr Taylor had paid Mr Duncan’s private office tens of thousands of pounds.

More serious questions were raised about the 54-year-old MP’s continued connection to the murky world of trans-global oil trading.

Before entering politics, Mr Duncan made vast sums of money by cutting deals to buy and sell large quantities of “black gold”, shipping it around the globe in a fleet of chartered tankers.

For two decades he has moved in circles that have been embroiled in claims of shady deals with dictators, war criminals and corrupt governments. The MP’s swashbuckling oil past has cast a huge question mark over his latest project and sparked calls for a government inquiry.

Former defence secretary Bob Ainsworth yesterday demanded Number 10 release all the details surrounding the behind-closed-doors operation, amid accusations of a “huge conflict of interest”.

Mr Ainsworth, a Labour MP, and member of the foreign affairs select committee, said it was “essential” to get to the bottom of the Libya oil cell, an organisation set up by Mr Duncan which ultimately benefited Vitol.

He said: “It’s important that we find adequate and appropriate ways to fully investigate this. It is unacceptable that these things should happen behind closed doors.”

And last night Douglas Alexander, Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: “Government ministers should be spending their time acting impartially in the UK national interest, assisting the Libyan people, rather than making grandiose claims about their own expertise and roles.” From 1982 to 1988 Oxford-educated Mr Duncan worked for Marc Rich, a highly controversial US commodity trader.

Mr Rich was indicted on charges of illegal trading with Iran and tax evasion, forcing the American to live in Switzerland because it had no extradition treaty with the US.

He was eventually pardoned during Bill Clinton’s last week in office.

Mr Duncan, while working for Mr Rich, had been involved in an elaborate operation to bust UN oil sanctions against apartheid South Africa, according to a newspaper in 2001.

The MP dismissed the allegations as “malicious and false” claiming that documents on the deal had been copied to him by mistake.

He set up Harcourt Consultants after Mr Rich fled the US.

He earned roughly £400,000 a year – and boasted that he’d made £1million during the Gulf War by selling oil to Pakistan, between 1988 and 1992.

At the same time, Mr Duncan was dipping his toes into politics, and was elected to the Commons in 1992.

After several minor positions in the John Major government, he played a key role in William Hague’s successful bid for the Tory leadership in 1997.

Mr Duncan became Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry during David Cameron’s leadership.

But he kept very close links with his old friends in the oil industry.

Even in 1993, just a year into political life, Mr Duncan was to become embroiled in an alleged illegal multi-million-pound oil deal that would later lead to a criminal investigation.

In 2001, it emerged that the Pakistan government was probing a huge oil shipment in 1993, when Vitol sold 280,000 tonnes of “contaminated” oil to the country’s state-owned power company.

Mr Duncan was a paid consultant to Vitol at the time and dealt principally with its operations in Pakistan.

In 1994, the Pakistan government began an inquiry into the scandal, which was subsequently dropped.

There is no suggestion Mr Duncan or Vitol had acted improperly or illegally.

His friendship with Vitol, especially company boss Mr Taylor, would continue for the next 17 years.

Mr Taylor has given more than £200,000 to the Conservative Party, much of which went directly to Mr Duncan’s office. Mr Duncan has always maintained he was unaware his office cash had come from Mr Taylor.

The MP was certainly not fazed by Vitol’s regular bumps with controversy.

Between April 2008 and April 2009, while a shadow minister, Duncan was paid £35,000 a year to work 20 days – £1,750 a day – for Arawak Energy, an oil exploration company with interests in Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

The firm, which has offices in St James’s in London, is part-owned by Vitol.

Mr Duncan joined Arawak as a non-executive director, just weeks before the UK-Canadian oil firm raised money via a flotation on the London Stock Exchange.

At the same time, Mr Duncan had also been earning £45,000-a-year with the Los Angeles-based technology company Catalytic Solutions.

Mr Duncan – who once said he’d be “super-rich” if he had stayed working in the oil industry – resigned from both positions in 2009 and his consultancy business also ceased trading.

The move came after David Cameron demanded a clampdown on the outside interests of shadow ministers. But Mr Duncan’s continued lucrative link to Vitol caused more concern, especially when some questionable oil deals were dragged up in the media.

Documents showed it signed a deal with Serbian company Orion to sell oil to the former Yugoslavia.

In 2007, Vitol confessed to “grand larceny” in a US court and was fined $17million for paying $13million in illegal “surcharges” to Saddam Hussein’s government to help facilitate oil deals.

Silver-tongued Mr Duncan has been schmoozing super-rich oil magnates, especially those in the Middle East, for two decades.

The openly gay politician even proposed to partner James Dunseath on Valentine’s Day while visiting Oman.

His links with the oil-rich nation stem from his work and almost without fail he spends New Year there as a guest of the Sultanate. In the past 10 years, he has spent more than 100 days living it up in luxury in Oman. The tab was picked up by the Sultan’s government, which has presented him with five watches, three sets of cufflinks, and a traditional Omani coffee pot and incense burner.

Duncan has always denied suggestions there is anything improper in his relationship with the Omani regime, but again it raises questions over how he can remain impartial when brokering oil deals on behalf of the British Government.

Last night Labour MP John Speller said: “It is curious that he has kept such strong links with these companies that have regularly fallen foul of the law. It raises serious questions of judgement.”

The US is set to release $300million of frozen Libyan assets to the Vitol Group to pay for fuel for the rebels.

It is reported Vitol bought two tankers of crude oil from the National Transitional Council, the rebels’ umbrella group, while providing about 20 tankers of refined product.

No 10 has insisted there was no conflict of interest in his role with the Libya oil cell and it said his links to the oil industry were well known and registered.

Alan Duncan's top secret plot to get oil to Libyan rebels

HIDDEN away in two disused rooms in the Foreign Office, Alan Duncan plotted to get oil to the rebels.

He led a team of six over four months in the Libya oil cell.

David Cameron commissioned the unit, created in early April after the first round of bombing failed to topple Colonel Gaddafi.

Duncan went to the National Security Council with intelligence that sanctions were hurting the rebels while leaving the Libyan dictator untouched.

Duncan set up meetings between anti-government forces and his old company Vitol which then supplied oil to the rebels without upfront payment.

The cell also set up a major oil symposium, and worked with UK Trade & Investment to get firms operating after the conflict.

U.N. Scientific Report Slams Shell for Nigeria Oil Pollution

It clings to the vegetation, coats the waterways and in some parts just gushes brazenly into the swamp.



This is the legacy of more than 50 years of oil drilling in Nigeria.

A U.N. report released on Thursday is placing the blame for this ecological disaster on Royal Dutch Shell and the Nigerian government.

The report calls for the world's largest ever oil clean-up operation, with an initial price tag of one billion dollars.

Audrey Gaughran of Amnesty International says the report is welcome news and that the scientific findings confirm what many locals have suspected for a long time.

[Audrey Gaughran, Global Thematic Programme, Amnesty International]:

''So this exposure of Shell's failure to clean up is extremely serious, because Shell's often maintained that it operates to best international standards; that is totally debunked by this report.''

Another finding of the report is that area's groundwater and not just its lakes and streams are completely polluted.

[Audrey Gaughran, Global Thematic Programme, Amnesty International]

"The human impact is that people are drinking polluted water, growing crops on polluted land, breathing polluted air, their health is at risk. They're trying to fish in polluted water - if they can find fish - which becomes increasingly difficult. So, the cumulative impact of this - and this has been going on for 50 years in the Delta - this is incredibly serious, and hopefully this U.N. report, because it's science-based and peer reviewed science, will move the debate forward and move us towards actually dealing with the problem in the Delta."

Environmental experts predict it could take up to 30 years to clean up pollution in the Niger Delta.

Shell Urged To Reveal Scale Of Oil Spill

Oil has been leaking from a ruptured pipeline at Royal Dutch Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform in the North Sea since last Wednesday at least, but even three days after the company confirmed that the spill had actually occurred, there is still no indication of how much crude has leaked into the ocean.



An oil spill in the North Sea is estimated to amount to several hundred tonnes, making it the biggest such leak in more than a decade, according to government figures.

The spill - far greater than annual totals dating back to 2001 - was described as "substantial" by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The total amount of oil discharged into the North Sea in 2009 was 50.93 tonnes.

Shell, which operates the Gannet Alpha platform about 112 miles east of Aberdeen, said the subsea well was shut on Wednesday, but it has not confirmed the quantity of the leak.

A DECC spokesman said the energy firm is still trying to "completely halt" any further leakage.

The spokesman said: "Although small in comparison to the Macondo, Gulf of Mexico, incident, in the context of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), the spill is substantial.

"But it is not anticipated that oil will reach the shore and indeed it is expected that it will be dispersed naturally.

"The UK Continental Shelf oil spill record is strong, which is why it is disappointing that this spill has happened.

"We take any spill very seriously and we will be investigating the causes of the spill and learning any lessons from the response to it."

The spokesman added: "Current estimates are that the spill could be several hundred tonnes.

"However, it is always very difficult and takes time to get an accurate assessment of the size of a spill and this is subject to ongoing revision."

It is important to note that it is unlikely to be very much. Production at Gannet Alpha is estimated to be between 4,500 to 6,000 barrels of oil a day and with the well that feeds the pipeline shut-in since Wednesday, the amount of oil that could have leaked out probably totals in the hundreds of barrels rather than the thousands.

The incident is very different from BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill last year, where oil spewed into the ocean directly from a wellhead that was thousands of feet underwater. The extreme depth and pressure complicated efforts to seal the well.

Gannet Alpha is a shallow rig, standing in water only 310 feet deep. However, rough seas and high winds are a complicating factor. But by not detailing the full extent of the spill days into the event, Shell runs the risk of allowing conjecture and skepticism to gain traction.

While Shell says it doesn’t expect the oil to reach British shores, that claim is undermined by its reluctance to say how much oil it’s actually dealing with.

Already environmental groups and politicians are criticizing the company for Shell’s secretive response, saying that even a minor spill can have a serious ecological impact. And the spill isn’t the first to have occurred on the platform. Data from the Health and Safety Executive show that 10 leak incidents happened at Gannet Alpha in 2009 and 2010. While only one of them was logged as serious–in that case, owing to a gas leak that could have ignited–it does raise the specter of ongoing safety and maintenance issues at the facility.

The HSE has in the past highlighted problems with ageing North Sea oil facilities, saying last December the industry “still has a long way to go in this.”

For now, Shell says that it has the leak under control and that the flow rate is slowing, suggesting that pressure inside and out the pipeline is equilibrating. This could mean the worst is over. But for now, we’re still dealing in hypotheticals. Until Shell comes out with some harder facts, that won’t change.