Then came the arrest of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky on a charge of tax fraud.
Unlike Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a jailed tycoon, Mr Prokhorov has done well over the past decade.
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Two such individuals, Liu Yongxing and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are highlights of our annual roster this year.
The most popular example: former Yukos oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man.
Mr Sechin is seen as the main force behind the attack on Yukos and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is currently in jail facing charges of fraud and tax evasion.
Anastasia Volochkova said United Russia's bosses duped her into signing a letter condemning imprisoned tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
They must look the other way when Putin orders a second kangaroo court for jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Viktor Pinchuk invoked the name of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in his struggle with the new government of Ukraine.
It culminated in the sentencing of billionaire businessmen Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.
For instance, Mr Browder always maintained that Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the ex-oligarch now in a Siberian labour camp, had it coming.
He did not support the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oligarch who challenged Mr Putin, and even questioned the prosecutor's tactics.
And the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once one of the country's wealthiest oligarchs, has turned into a showpiece of political repression.
Last month's arrest of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud, theft and tax evasion has Russian businessmen biting their fingernails.
Not so lucky was another jailbird, Russian oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky .
The son of jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky issued an appeal to Davos participants to press the Russian delegation to eradicate corruption.
Another signatory was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a controversial oilman once vilified by his foreign shareholders but now reinventing himself as an investor-friendly Internet entrepreneur.
In 2003, the authorities arrested Yukos oil company chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man, for what many believe to have been his political threat to Putin.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who backed an opposition party, has been in jail since 2003 and was convicted in 2005 on charges of tax evasion and fraud.
One man who has said little of late about Yukos's fate is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the company's biggest single shareholder and an opponent of Mr Putin.
Most of the theories about how Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ex-head of Yukos, an oil firm, offended Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, might be applied to Roman Abramovich, too.
He also publicly denounced Russia's overmighty tycoons, even naming a big oil baron, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is locked in battle with an American investor, Kenneth Dart.
Former Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been in prison for nearly a decade, despite repeated and ongoing efforts to get his conviction for money laundering overturned.
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When prosecutors launched an attack on Yukos, culminating in the arrest in October of its boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, all those associated with the firm were tainted.
In October, Russia's richest oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested and charged with fraud and tax evasion in connection with his running of Yukos, an oil giant.
But, like the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia in 2003, her treatment has signalled to prosecutors and the security services that they have a free hand.
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Together with widespread corruption, this has allowed him to jail potential opponents like the oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, confiscating his assets which included the oil company, Yukos.
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Running an oil company is not easy, and the boss of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a chemical engineer by training, has shown something of a flair for it.
After the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky on fraud and tax evasion charges earlier this year, many on both hemispheres had feared the post-Soviet thaw was icing over.
In this he is reminiscent of Vladimir Putin during his first term as Russia's president, when he chose to have Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon, arrested in 2003.
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