Last week was a good week, to say the least, for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, recently released from a Russian jail. A complex story of punitive tax assessments on his former company, Yukos, has led to a judgment of €1.9bn (£1.5bn) in Strasbourg against Russia.
I shall concentrate on the Strasbourg case, although for sheer numbers the story is perhaps elsewhere; on 28 July shareholders had obtained awards from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ordering Russia to pay $51.57bn (£30bn) to shareholders in Yukos Oil, saying officials had manipulated the legal system to bankrupt the company.
