 Mr Khodorkovsky: Accused of trying to "buy the Duma". |
When the Russian people go to the polls on December 7 they may well find that they are voting not just for a politician, but for a representative of big business.
Yukos, until recently headed by the gaoled tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has candidates standing for all the major parties, including the Communists and the United Russia party which supports President Putin.
The 'Yukos candidates' are either high ranking employees or significant shareholders in the company.
Mr Khodorkovsky has also made significant personal donations to three parties.
They are:
- Yabloko, a social democratic party whose name means Apple
- The Union of Rightist Forces, headed by the former Privatisation Minister, Anatoly Chubais
- The Communist Party
Corporate influence
Mr Khodorkovsky's opponents have accused him of trying to "buy the Duma".
But those Kremlin watchers who think they have found a reason here for his arrest must keep on looking. Yukos is far from the only big business to push its people towards the Duma.
Its rivals in the energy sector, Lukoil and TNK, are fielding their own candidates.
And at least 12 companies from the metals sector are trying to find seats in the grey block - formerly the Soviet Five-Year-Plan Bureau - which houses the Russian Parliament.
"Everyone's doing it"
Among those partially pay rolled by Mr Khodorkovsky is the leader of Yabloko, Grigory Yavlinsky.
Mr Khodorkovsky pays for half of Yabloko's election expenses.
And until recently he shook hands with Mr Khodorkovsky "once or twice a week", he says.
It is not hard to see how Mr Khodorkovsky's money is being spent.
Young people are waving Yabloko flags on almost every street corner in Moscow and Mr Yavlinsky's portrait - a youthful shot perhaps taken some years ago - watches over the highways as Moscow's drivers plough their Mercedes and Ladas through the winter slush and ice.
Mr Yavlinsky says that all the parties, without exception, are funded by various oligarchs because theirs is the only source of political finance available.
"I think that the Kremlin was just aiming to have such a system in Russia, because through Kremlin influence on the oligarchs it was much easier for them to have influence on the political parties," he says.
Bad medicine
Mr Yavlinsky makes no bones about saying that Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest and denial of bail is politically motivated.
 Business wants the Russian people's vote |
"It's one the most absurd developments," he says. "To put all the oligarchs in prison would not be very difficult - there are only 30 or 40 of them - but what would be the next step? The police redistribution of property or what? This is when the medicine is worse than the disease."
Yabloko's own cure for "the disease of the oligarchic system" would be a package of laws to put the "criminal privatisations" of the mid-1990s onto a legal footing.
In return for securing their property rights, the oligarchs would pay a windfall tax to make the settlement acceptable to the people of Russia.
Not bought
But the fact that Mr Khodorkovsky is actively involved in politics does not mean his beneficiaries are firmly seated in his pocket, his defenders insist.
At Yukos's Moscow headquarters, the would-be member of Parliament for the Communist party, Alexei Kondaurov, insists that Mr Khodorkovsky did not instruct him to stand for election.
"I have always been a man of the left" he says.
Indeed, a number of Moscow journalists remember his former role as a press officer for the KGB.
Mr Kondaurov admits that his former boss Mr Khodorkovsky has many philosophical differences with the Communists leader Genardy Zhuganov, not least that Mr Zhuganov appears to be keen to renationalise all companies working in the area of natural resources.
But he says that Mr Zhuganov respects Mr Khodorkovsky's abilities and might well offer him a position as a manager of a State owned company.
"I know both Mr Zhuganov and Mr Khodorkovsky personally," he says.
"What I say about both of them is this: Neither man is working just for himself. Both care deeply about the wider good of society. I think that two men with this common view can work together."
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To put all the oligarchs in prison would not be very difficult - there are only 30 or 40 of them - but what would be the next step? The police redistribution of property or what? This is when the medicine is worse than the disease. 
Russia's oligarchs
