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Khodorkovsky was quick to privatise the [[Komsomol]] property available to him. By then Bank Menatep was by Russian standards a well-developed financial institution and became the first Russian business to issue stock to the public since the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Russian Revolution]] in [[1917]]. The bank grew quickly, winning more and more valuable Government clients such as the Ministry of Finance, the State Taxation Service, the Moscow municipal government and the Russian arms export agency, all of whom deposited their funds with Menatep, which Khodorkovsky mostly used to expand his burgeoning trading empire.
Bank Menatep provided the foundation for Khodorkovsky's bidding for Yukos in 1995 in the infamous "loans-for-shares" scheme. In this manipulation, a small group of individuals well-connected well connected to government structures were handed valueable pieces of state property in return for cash "loans" (which in many cases were funded by the bank accounts of the state bank). One purpose of this operation was to help Boris Yeltsin's reelection in 1996. Khodorkovsky paid for Yukos a small price of 350 million dollars. Yukos says that approximately $1.5 billion USD has been spent purchasing the [[asset]]s that now make up Yukos, with a [[market capitalisation]] of $31 billion USD.
A higher bid from a group of rivals was ruled out of the process by Menatep on a technicality. Menatep won the auction with a bid for $350 million USD for 78% of the company, which inferred a value of $450 million. When the company was listed two years later, it was valued at $9 billion. That transaction—and dozens like it—has led many Russians to believe, that the oligarchs like Khodorkovsky have stolen their fortunes from the state.
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