A founder of the currently bankrupt oil company Yukos, Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison term for fraud and tax evasion
"We believe that Mikhail Khodorkovsky is an extraordinary person who visited Chita. Not many people who have been to our provincial city have had such a high public profile, and I think many generations of Chita residents will tell their children that Khodorkovsky once visited our city. Therefore, we have every reason to apply to the Mayor's Office with a proposal to name a street after him," Marina Savateyeva said.
She specified that the street proposed to be renamed houses the pre-trial detention center that Khodorkovsky was transferred to in December 2006 after a new criminal case was launched against him on money laundering charges.
The activist said the consent of the people living on the street was needed for the street to be renamed.
The imprisonment of Khodorkovsky, who acquired oil assets through controversial privatization deals in the early-1990s, has met sharp criticism from human rights groups, who insist the tycoon's prosecution was orchestrated by the authorities to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin and as part of a campaign to bring Russia's mineral assets back under Kremlin control.
