MOSCOW, Oct 25: A Moscow court on Saturday ordered the arrest and detention of Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, after he was charged on seven counts of massive fraud and tax evasion, Interfax reported.

“The Basmanny court has given sanction to the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky,” the brief Interfax dispatch said.

The chief of Russia’s number one oil producer, Yukos, Khodorkovsky was seized by armed agents from Russia’s FSB security service at a Siberian airport at dawn Saturday and rushed back to Moscow for questioning.

Prosecutors said the dramatic detention was necessary because the Yukos chief had failed to show up for questioning in Moscow on Friday.

He and his top associate have been charged with defrauding the state out of more than one billion dollars.

Yukos has been under the prosecutors’ glare for months and one of its top shareholders has been in jail since July.

The surprise detention of Russia’s top oligarch sent shudders through the country’s business and political circles.

Analysts in Russia said the campaign against Yukos could not have been conducted without Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implicit approval.

A joint statement by two opposition parties partly funded by Yukos — the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Yabloko — said the detention “changes for the worse the political situation in the country and puts into doubt the stability of Russia’s constitutional order.”

And the speaker of the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, Gennady Seleznyev called on investigators and police to explain the arrest and warned against the use of legal procedures by “political command.”

Investors, for their part, voiced concern that the Yukos affair was a sign the government intended to re-examine the nation’s shadowy privatization deals of the 1990s, in which a handful of men, including Khodorkovsky, became incredibly wealthy.—AFP