Russian president Vladimir Putin has sought to remove key political rivals with a series of false prosecutions, an extradition hearing was told today.

Putin had deliberately evoked comparisons with Stalin during a “co-ordinated attack” on high-profile figures considered a threat to his power base, the hearing was told.

Bow Street Magistrates Court in London was considering requests to extradite two executives from the capital to face trial in Moscow.

It heard that a request to hand over Dmitry Maruev, 40, and Natalia Chernysheva, 40, to answer fraud allegations was part of a campaign against former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man.

Khodorkovsky had owned Yukos, Russia’s biggest – and first privately owned – oil company, and funded a number of political parties opposed to Putin’s regime.

Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Chernysheva, said the request to extradite the pair was an example of a campaign of political prosecutions being carried out by the Russian state.

“But for Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s involvement in the political arena in Russia neither he, nor Ms Chernysheva, nor Mr Maruev would have been singled out for prosecution or punitive treatment,” he told the court.

“The purpose of the prosecutions is to remove any threat to Putin’s power from Khodorkovsky and to provide justification for expropriation by the state of Yukos’ assets.”

Heavily pregnant Ms Chernysheva is wanted for trial over an alleged share fraud in 1994 and claims of a 763billion rubble embezzlement of the Volgograd regional government in 1997.

She had been an executive at one of the largest shareholders in Yukos, but later served in the Russian Presidential Administration.

Mr Maruev, who had been deputy chief accountant of Yukos, is accused of involvement in the latter case, centred around the oil company.

The court heard that in October 2003, Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint by Russian special forces as he boarded a plane on a Siberian airfield. His business partner was earlier seized whilst undergoing hospital treatment.

Mr Fitzgerald told the hearing there was an “international consensus”, which included the European Parliament and US authorities, that the attack on the businessman and his associates was politically motivated.

He said the prosecutions had been prompted by parliamentary and presidential elections in 2003 and 2004 and foreshadowed in a 2000 speech.

“During his first year in power President Putin promised to ‘liquidate the oligarchs as a class’. This was a deliberate echo of Stalin’s 1929 promise to ‘liquidate the kulaks as a class’,” said Mr Fitzgerald.

Stalin’s speech came ahead of the execution of millions of peasant farmers who had resisted collectivisation policies.

Mr Fitzgerald said Putin deliberately revisited his proposal to ‘get rid of all the rich people’ in 2003, at a time when the National Strategy Council warned of dangers of an oligarch-backed coup.

“At a time of increased political activity the attack on the oligarchs was revived and carried out on Khodorkovsky and Yukos,” he told the court.

“The significance of the threat to liquidate the oligarchs, as any Russian would have understood, was that there was a deliberate echo of Stalin’s promise.

“It was an extraordinary thing for the President of Russia to say, using the same language Stalin had before embarking upon one of the greatest episodes of mass murder.”

He said media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky and businessman Boris Berozovsky had been targeted in a culture of “show trials” and “intimidation of defendants, lawyers and judges”.

Mr Fitzgerald claimed earlier investigations into the allegations against Ms Chernysheva and Mr Maruev previously recommended no prosecutions and said the 1994 case was only revived at the personal request of the Russian president.

He is seeking a refusal of the extradition of the pair, both believed to be seeking political asylum in the UK, on the grounds the request is politically motivated.

It is also claimed they will not receive a fair trial and any prosecution in Russia would be unjust as a result of the length time since the alleged offences.

Lawyers acting for the Russian Federation deny the prosecutions have any political basis.

The hearing was adjourned and will be resumed on Monday.