RUSSIA has issued an international arrest warrant for Mikhail Khodorkovsky on suspicion of ordering a contract killing, investigators said Wednesday, prompting the former oil tycoon to declare the Kremlin had gone mad.

    Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, was pardoned by Putin in 2013 and freed after a decade in jail on fraud charges he says were politically motivated.

    He accused Putin in November of leading Russia into a 1970s Soviet-style period of stagnation that could eventually trigger the country’s collapse. Earlier this month he said a peaceful revolution was “inevitable.”

    Russian investigators said they had concluded that Khodorkovsky, then head of the now defunct Yukos oil company, had ordered subordinates to kill Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk, a Siberian oil town, in 1998.

    Petukhov was shot dead by a gunman near his office.

    Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said Khodorkovsky’s motive for allegedly ordering the official’s murder was related to Petukhov’s demands for Yukos to pay local taxes he said it was evading.

    Markin said Khodorkovsky had also ordered the killing of a businessman, Evgeny Rybin, who was shot in 1998 and had his car bombed the following year but survived.

    Khodorkovsky denies the allegations and condemned the decision, suggesting it was politically motivated.  (SD-Agencies)