Yukos Affair — Khodorkovsky Imprisoned, Company Dismantled

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man and head of oil giant Yukos, was arrested on tax evasion and fraud charges in October 2003 after funding opposition parties and criticising Kremlin corruption. He was convicted and imprisoned for a decade, while Yukos's core assets were seized through forced tax claims and sold at a rigged auction to a shell company that transferred them to state-owned Rosneft. A Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague later ruled in 2014 that Russia had illegally expropriated Yukos and ordered it to pay $50 billion in compensation to former shareholders — one of the largest arbitration awards in history.