The death of Stephen Curtis

"Our robber barons created wealth. Russia's oligarchs took over wealth from the state and shipped much of that wealth out of Russia illegally. I don't agree that Khordokovsky knew he would face imprisonment if he returned to Russia. He thought his high level contacts in the Bush administration would protect him. Khordokovsky is a thug who got religion too late."
-- Stephen F. Cohen commenting on the trial of Mikhail Khordokovsky

In the early evening of March 3 this year, after one of his countless business trips for Yukos, Mr Curtis boarded his private helicopter at London's Battersea Airport. At the controls was experienced pilot Matt Radford, 34.

Around 20 minutes into the journey towards Mr Curtis' multi-million-pound seafront home, Pennsylvania Castle, at Portland, Dorset, the helicopter plummeted to the ground near Bournemouth Airport and exploded. ...

Witnesses heard the helicopter's rotor cut out and pilot Mr Radford reported an unspecified problem to air traffic control. It exploded into flames 29 seconds later. ...

On November 3, 2005 the inquest jury returned a verdict of accidental death, saying the crash was probably caused by the pilot becoming disoriented in bad weather.

Stephen Curtis was a lawyer who set up a breathtakingly vast and complex web of shell companies that became Group Menatep, the parent company of Yukos Oil, Russia's most valuable oil company. The shell game allowed Mikhail Khordokovsky and his cohorts to rob the Russian people of billions of dollars.

Stephen Curtis knew enough to put Khordokovsky away for life. When Khordokovsky was arrested in Russia in 2004 on tax evasion and fraud charges he saw that Curtis was appointed managing director of Group Menatep, the parent company of Yukos. But the criminal investigation had spread outside Russia. Swiss auditors looking at possible money laundering or tax evasion attempts raided two Yukos companies and seized their assets.

In the effort to avoid prosecution Stephen Curtis offered to sing to Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service. He only managed to meet with NCIS twice before he was killed.

Eric Jenkins, Mr Curtis's uncle, told the inquest that his nephew said he was receiving threatening phone calls and was under surveillance. Mr Jenkins said that two weeks before his death Mr Curtis had said that if anything happened to him, it would not be an accident.

Although there was no evidence of sabotage from the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) ... the father of the pilot, Dennis Radford, said he thought the possibility of sabotage had not been fully investigated by the AAIB.

Quotes from (UK) Telegraph and icWales.