Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the onetime Russian oil tycoon who was imprisoned for a decade in a politically tinged case, says he doesn't intend to get involved in politics now that he's been pardoned and released.

President Vladimir Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky on Friday, and hours later he flew on a private jet to Berlin.

Khodorkovsky had been imprisoned for tax evasion and money-laundering. The cases were widely criticized as political revenge, for Khodorkovsky had challenged Putin's dominance by funding opposition parties. He was also believed to have personal political ambitions.

In an interview published Sunday on the website of the Russian newspaper Novoye Vremya, Khodorkovsky is quoted as saying in his pardon application he said he did not intend to get involved in politics or seek the return of the assets of his dismantled Yukos oil company.

However, Khodorkovsky was quoted as telling reporters in Berlin on Sunday that he does intend to continue appealing his convictions.

The accusations "were so phantasmagoric that to describe them by non-political reasoning you would probably have to accept the postulate that people who aren't completely adequate work in the special services," he said, according to the news agency Interfax.