Grapevine October 10, 2021: Check mates

• Published date: 09 October 2021
• Author: GREER FAY CASHMAN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Khodorkovsky's wealth was acquired by his obtaining control of a number of Siberian oil fields and unifying them under the name of Yukos which became one of the leading companies that resulted from the privatization of Russian state assets. In 2003, he was arrested and charged with fraud and his assets were frozen by Vladimir Putin. In 2005, Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison, and while there was further charged with embezzlement and money laundering. After prominent German politician Hans Dietrich Genscher lobbied on his behalf, Putin pardoned him and released him from prison in December 2013. It was widely believed that Khodorkovsky had been framed for political reasons. One of his good friends and former business partners is billionaire philanthropist Leonid Nevzlin, a former software engineer who has lived in Israel since 2003, and was responsible for saving what was then Beit Hatfutsot, the Jewish Diaspora museum, from closure.

Nevzlin's daughter Irina, who is married to MK Yuli Edelstein, and who is a contender for the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency, has for several years headed the Board of Directors of the museum and oversaw its massive transformation project during which it was renamed the ANU Museum. She is also president of the Nadav Foundation that was established by her father and the founder and chair of IMPROVATE, the company bringing Blair, Kasparov and Khodorkovsky to Israel to join hi-tech executives from around the world at a Jerusalem-based conference on innovation.

cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });

>

■ AT THE three-day Israel Agricultural Science Conference held in the first week of October, with some 800 online and in-person participants, special recognition was given to BARD (the US-Israel binational agricultural research and development fund). Prof. Yoram Kapulnik was honored with a plaque at the opening session "In appreciation of your support of agricultural research and marking 35 years of activity of the Va'adia-BARD postdoctoral fellowship program."

The Va'adia-BARD postdoctoral fellowship program, founded in 1979, is designed to identify and support young scientists who will eventually become leaders in agricultural sciences and technologies in universities and research institutes in the United States and Israel. The primary objective of the fellowship is to enable these young scientists to acquire new...