After the arrest of Khodorkovskiy's partner Lebedev in July 2003 Mr Kasyanov asked President Putin on a number of occasions what was the reason why Lebedev had been arrested and why the attacks on the Yukos company had started. Eventually President Putin told him they (meaning Khodorkovskiy and other owners of Yukos) provided funding not only to Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces ("the SPS") which he (Putin) allowed them to provide funding to, but also to communists. And he didn't allow to sponsor communists.

At that time there was no individual opposition party that would present any significant threat to the President. However, if Yabloko and the SPS had created a coalition with the communists in the Duma then their combined forces would have represented a real opposition force which would have worried Putin.

Later in the summer President Putin also expressed anger at Khodorkovskiy touring the Russian regions speaking on political topics.

After Khodorkovskiy was arrested Mr Kasyanov was told by the GPO that the reason for the charges was the tax minimisation schemes used by Yukos. However in the opinion of Mr Kasyanov's Government, all oil companies used the tax havens in the same way. Although this ran counter to the financial and economic policy of his Government it did not run counter to the law in force at that time. As such Mr Kaysanov believed that the law had been applied retroactively contrary to both Russian and ECHR law.

Mr Kasyanov also comments on the first Khodorkovskiy trial. He says his understanding was that if documents directly relevant to the Yukos tax optimisations had been presented to the court, the information and the conclusions contained in them would have ruined the charges pertaining to those issues. He says he is sure that if the leading experts of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Taxes and Levies had been asked to give their opinions about the conformity of the Yukos tax optimisation arrangements to RF laws, then those opinions, drawn up without political pressure on those experts, would have confirmed the lawfulness of their use. It is common knowledge that almost all oil companies at that time used analogous or similar optimisation arrangements.

Mr Kasyanov says that he believes that the initial reason for the criminal prosecution of Khodorkovskiy under artificially created charges was the political concern of President Putin and his immediate circle before the State Duma election of December 2003. The goal of grabbing the Yukos assets appeared later. Subsequent events, particularly the sham sale of Yuganskneftegaz to BaikalFinanceGroup, convinced Mr Kasyanov that as time went on the political rationale for prosecuting Khodorkovskiy was supplemented by the desire to grab assets from owners of Yukos