The Russian super-billionaires waiting for a knock on the door.

(From Irish Independent)

It was the last thing Russia's richest man expected. Mikhail Khodorkovskywas sitting on his jet on a Siberian runway last weekend when Russian security agents stormed the plane, handcuffed him and bungled him away.

"They rushed aboard the plane shouting 'FSB [the successor to the KGB], drop yourweapons'," a spokesman for Mr Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company later said.

The billionaire awoke the next day in a cramped cell in Moscow's notoriously filthy andovercrowded Matrossakaya Tishina prison. Aids, TB and hepatitis are reportedly rife there. Charged with fraud, tax evasion and theft of state property by his Yukos businessempire, he could be held for two months before prosecutors decide whether to pursue a trial. If convicted he could face 10 years in prison.

It has been a humiliating and depressing week for the tycoon, sending financial marketstumbling and arousing fears that investors would pull money out of the country. The arresthas also focused attention on the small club of super-rich men who control Russia's economy and it has raised questions about how they amassed such enormous fortunes so quickly.

For some, Mr Khodorkovsky is one of a cabal of 'bandit capitalists' who plundered anaive, newly-independent country when the Soviet system collapsed. According to thisview, Mr Khodorkovsky is a robber baron who is getting his just deserts. He amassed a fortune of $8bn ([euro]6.84bn) in the chaos that accompanied the unseemly and often violentasset grab during the privatisations of the Russian economy in the 1990s. For a 40-year-old to put such a large fortune together in such a short time is bound to raise questions.

Because the state sold off its assets on a monumental scale to embrace capitalism 12 years ago, it is argued that none of the large new Russian businesses is 'clean' and thelarger the business the greater the violations.