Top Economist Flees Russia amid Khodorkovsky Probe

A top economist has fled Russia after being interrogated over the case of jailed oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky amid fears investigators may be preparing a fresh case against the fallen tycoon.

Sergei Guriyev, the outspoken dean of the New Economic School, has abruptly left Russia for France as concerns mount that Russia's best and brightest are being forced out of the country amid a crackdown on dissenters.

His colleagues fear Guriyev, who openly supports Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, could be targeted over recommendations he made to the Kremlin's rights council during a review of Khodorkovsky's case.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, has been in prison since 2003 in a case his supporters describe as punishment for challenging President Vladimir Putin.

In 2010, he was convicted of a second set of fraud charges and is now set for release in 2014.

Guriyev, one of several experts who reviewed the case, said the second conviction against Khodorkovsky was unjust.

Based on the expert views, the human rights council in 2011 released a report recommending that investigators reconsider the oligarch's conviction.

Over the past months, several experts who worked on the report have faced pressure from investigators and have had their homes searched, said a member of the rights council Tamara Morshchakova.

Morshchakova, a retired Constitutional Court judge, told Agence France Presse that investigators claimed the report was financed with the help of "some foreign money".

Another expert who worked on the report, Mikhail Subbotin, an economist from the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics, told AFP his home was searched in September.

He added that investigators believed the report was financed by Khodorkovsky and his associates.

Guriyev was questioned by investigators more than a month ago in connection with the case against Khodorkovsky's now dismantled Yukos oil company and the report he helped prepare, his lawyer Ruslan Kozhura said.

He said that his client was a witness in the probe and has not been charged.

Guriyev, now in France, said he could not comment on the Yukos case due to a confidentiality oath.

"I can only say that I did participate in the expert evaluation," he told AFP in e-mailed comments.

"I have never received any money from Khodorkovsky and his partners," he said.

"Better in Paris than Krasnokamensk," Guriyev wrote on Facebook in a comment that was later removed.

Krasnokamensk is a small town in eastern Siberia where Khodorkovsky served his first prison term.

Guriyev declined further comment, saying only he was on vacation. His wife, herself an economist, moved to France several years ago.

Guriyev is one of Russia's most respected economists and a government adviser. It was at Guriyev's New Economic School that US President Barack Obama spoke during his visit to Moscow in 2009.

The news website Slon.ru, citing high-ranking sources, said several top figures including First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and ex-finance minister Alexei Kudrin had asked Putin to intervene on behalf of the economist.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to confirm the report but said the president was aware that Guriyev had left Russia.

The head of the Kremlin's rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, told AFP he had raised the subject with Putin after the searches at Subbotin's home. "He took note," Fedotov said.

The interrogation of Guriyev and pressure on other experts have renewed concerns among observers that investigators may be preparing to pursue a new criminal case against Khodorkovsky in a bid to further extend his jail term.

Subbotin suggested that investigators had acted on orders to "find enough evidence for a third case" against the tycoon.

"I am afraid it is being prepared," added Irina Yasina, a rights activist with links to Khodorkovsky.

Since returning to the Kremlin for a third term last May despite huge protests against his 13-year rule, Putin has all but dismantled the legacy of his predecessor Dmitry Medvedev and unleashed what critics call an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition.