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Pardoned tycoon thanks Germany for efforts towards his release

BERLIN, December 22, 19:03 /ITAR-TASS/. Pardoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky thanked on Sunday efforts of Germany’s former foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher which helped to close the chapter on the YUKOS case.

Khodorkovsky also expressed gratitude to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I am grateful to Germany, grateful for involvement in my destiny. And I would least of all want to see problems arising because of this involvement for those people whose country I thank. I received pledges that there are no such problems today,” Khodorkovsky said.

He confirmed that he had no plans to engage in political activity, saying he was “planning public activity”. He also thanked Switzerland for its role. “A lot of facts connected with my release are not known. I am grateful to Switzerland and the Swiss system of justice. It is the country where for the first time in the YUKOS case, that issue was thoroughly studied by judicial authorities and it was said that the case was a political one,” he said, adding that Switzerland had refused to assist Russian judicial agencies in that case.

He also said one of Swiss deputies had visited him in prison, and his attention had prevented people seeking to worsen his situation from doing that.

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