(24.12) He says Vladimir Putin pardoned him over the objections of Igor Sechin — the man Putin entrusted with constructing the dominant state oil company.

The assertion, if it bears out, signals a rift within the nation’s elite since Sechin, head of OAO Rosneft, the world’s biggest publicly traded oil producer by output now, and Putin go back to when the two worked in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office in the 1990s.