The following interview with Robert Amsterdam on the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky was published on Monday on page six of El País, Spain’s largest national daily newspaper.

Interview: Robert Amsterdam, international legal counsel to Mikhail Khodorkovsky

“In Russia the thieves hold court”

Georgina Higueras, Madrid, April 6, 2009

Arrested and expelled from Russia in 2005, following the first trial against the oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Canadian lawyer Robert Amsterdam, 53 years old, became the international legal counsel to the former owner of Yukos, who being the most wealth man in Russia became one of the biggest enemies of the Kremlin, who sent him to the galleys in 2003. “The accusations are absurd. It is a political process,” affirms Amsterdam with regard to the new trial against Khodorkovsky, which began last March 31, for having embezzled, according to the prosecutor, 896 billion rubles (some 20 billion euros).