SHOULD RUSSIA’S state-owned oil company Rosneft launch its $11 billion (£6 billion) initial public offering (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange this week, investors could well be laundering stolen assets — at least that is how Robert Amsterdam sees it. Amsterdam is lawyer to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once known as the richest man in Russia when he was head of Yukos, the huge oil company.

Khodorkovsky’s plight may have slipped from the attention of many in the West — the oligarch was arrested in 2003 and charged with fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion; tried in 2004, he was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment in 2006 — but Amsterdam is determined to change this. He sees the flotation as a way to recapture the agenda.

Amsterdam, a Canadian lawyer who has been at the centre of one of the world’s most watched legal cases for the past three years, is used to this kind of political battle. His relationship to Khodorkovsky has morphed from defence attorney into that of a travelling prophet, giving warning of the spread of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “energy imperialism”.

The Kremlin is attempting, according to Amsterdam, to “whitewash Khodorkovsky’s history, his phoney criminal prosecution and the history of Yukos”. The IPO is nothing less than “state theft” and anyone buying stock will be colluding in a climate of impunity that allows the Kremlin to operate with little regard for international law.

Amsterdam is not alone in that judgment. Others, including George Soros and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, have also questioned the morality of the IPO. Rosneft — with reserves of 19 million barrels of oil equivalent — is one of the biggest companies in the world. Its wealth is based on its acquisition of Yuganskneftegaz, the production company that Yukos was forced to sell to settle some of the massive tax debt the Kremlin said it owed.

Rosneft’s purchase of Yuganskneftegaz was seen as a state-orchestrated attempt to create a national oil major, and the destruction of Yukos as part of a politically motivated campaign against Khodorkovsky.

His belligerent, outspoken style has earned Amsterdam the enmity of the Kremlin. Last September, on the day the appeal against Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment was heard and immediately dismissed, Russia’s secret police force, the FSB, knocked on Amsterdam’s door in the middle of the night and told him he had 24 hours to leave Russia.

Amsterdam has been based in London since, but travels relentlessly in the cause of his client, speaking “from the highest mountain in the loudest voice” to anyone who will listen. In recent weeks he met Garry Kasparov, the former chess world champion-turned-democratic politician, and Lech Walesa, and visited the Bundestag.

The morality argument might not wash with hard-nosed investors, but the “dangerous precedent” of this IPO is a threat to any other investor in Russia, claims Amsterdam. By prosecuting the Yukos case, which was based on retroactive tax claims against the company, and proceeding with the flotation, Amsterdam says that the Kremlin has “taken away any security of property” in the country.

Why this should concern the lawyer of a man who has been sentenced to an eight-year prison sentence in far-away Siberia is a moot question. But Amsterdam believes that the “impunity” with which Russia is able to consolidate its “illegal” destruction of his client’s erstwhile company is directly related to the fate of Khodorkovsky himself.

As long as the international governments, the financial institutions that have participated in the valuation of Yuganskneftegaz and the Rosneft flotation, and Russia’s partners in the energy sphere continue to give Russia a “free pass” over issues like the Yukos case and the Khodorkovsky affair, his client will remain in prison,Amsterdam argues.

In Russia, Amsterdam is dismissed as nothing more than a PR spokesman for Khodorkovsky, and is accused of “going political”. But, says Amsterdam, it was the corruption of the “show trial” in Moscow that forced Khodorkovsky’s legal team to take his defence public. “When people use courts as stage props,” says Amsterdam, “there is no alternative”.

The extra-legal nature of the “project”, as those close to Khodorkovsky and his legal team call the efforts to free him, has drawn Amsterdam into the realm of energy politics. Khodorkovsky, he believes, is a “hostage” of the Kremlin in its imperialist ambitions and until these ambitions are recognised by the West, Khodorkovsky will remain in prison.

But first Amsterdam believes Russia must be forced to accept the international rule of law, including the European Energy Charter, a treaty governing international energy co-operation. “When Russia starts to acknowledge the rule of law in any area — but particularly the energy area — then my client starts to be set free.”

Amsterdam says: “A culture of impunity has put Khodorkovsky in jail. He will serve as a symbol of the destruction of the rule of law in Russia. And the minute that the Russians start being accountable, there is a psychological change that, in my view, begins to open the prison door.”

Amsterdam has not seen Khodorkovsky since his appeal failed. His client is now imprisoned in a “concentration camp” near Krasnokamensk. Earlier this year a fellow inmate slashed Khodorkovsky across the face with a knife, which lends some credence to Amsterdam’s claim that his first ambition is simply to keep him alive.

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