Russia?s authorities have seized the land in elite settlement Zhukovka, where cottages of former YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other former top managers of the company are situated.
The investigators say the real estate was bought for money that YUKOS failed to pay to the state in taxes.
In years of YUKOS prosperity, a village of cottages, the Apple Tree Garden, was built there; the residents were Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Brudno, other top managers of YUKOS and their families.
The owners were the first to abandon the Apple Tree Garden. Some of them were jailed, others added to the wanted list in 2004 to 2005. Let alone the guards and the service staff, only a few permanent residents have stayed there by this summer. Inna Khodorkovskya and her three children are among them, but it looks they will also have to search for a new cottage.
The ruling to seize the Apple Tree Garden that bans owners to sell, present or otherwise dispose of the real estates dates back to May 2, 2006. So far, the authorities have never attempted to take away the Garden worth tens of million dollars.
