A liberal Russian economist who has criticized President Vladimir Putin's policies said Friday he fled Russia on a day's notice because of fears of losing his freedom on "very bogus grounds.", AP reported. Sergei Guriev told The Associated Press that he wanted to escape pressure from a new criminal investigation linked to jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man. In a 25-minute phone conversation from Paris, where he arrived on a one-way flight on April 30, 41-year-old Guriev said he feared he could share the fate of witnesses in Khodorkovsky's case who ended up being defendants. One of them got so ill in jail he died after being released on bail. "I don't see under what circumstances I can return," Guriev said. Investigators began proceedings early this year against the authors of a report commissioned by then-president Dmitry Medvedev in 2011, to which Guriev, one of Russia's best-known economists, contributed. Experts found so many flaws in Khodorkovsky's 2010 conviction for embezzling oil that they called for the verdict to be overturned. The oil tycoon had been imprisoned since 2003 on charges of avoiding taxes. According to investigators, the authors of the report had a conflict of interest because they had previously received money from Khodorkovsky. Guriev denied receiving money from Khodorkovsky's oil company, Yukos, or its affiliates. However, Guriev said that he did not consider that it would have been illegal to do so. Two of the other five experts have been questioned by investigators but have not been charged. Guriev began to worry earlier this year when investigators interrogated him three times and searched his office, seizing hundreds of pages of documents and 45 gigabytes of emails dating back five years, on grounds he described as "extremely absurd." Though Guriev is only a witness in the case, he said the investigators' "lack of respect for the letter and spirit of the law" made him worry that they could name him as a suspect and take his passport away. -- SPA 19:06 LOCAL TIME 16:06 GMT تغريد
