Free Russia's Political Prisoners
The Committee to Free Khodorkovsky & Lebedev is a volunteer group of individuals organizing independently to raise awareness of human rights violations in Russia and call for the immediate release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.
Deutsche Welle
The World Court of Moscow has issued an administrative arrest for human rights activist and Khodorkovsky supporter Lev Ponomarev, the head of For Human Rights movement, for failing to obey the police.
The activist was detained on August 22, the Day of the Russian Flag, after opposition activists were trying to walk down the streets in Moscow with a Russian flag.
“I believe the ruling of the court is illegal. This is a purely a political order,” said the human rights activist who plans to appeal the decision.
Ponomarev has been an active defendant of the rights of those who fell victims of the government’s attack on YUKOS.
Note by Jeremy: Mr Ponomarev is a distinguished member of our Committee.
On August 5, 2010, defense attorney Elena Liptser filed a motion in which the defense asked the court to send an official request to the German authorities asking them to help facilitate questioning of Frank Rieger, a German citizen and former vice president at YUKOS-RM, via a video-conference. In addition, the defense motioned to add to the case file and to enter into evidence Rieger’s record of interview by counsel.
She noted that despite having been summoned two and a half months before Rieger failed to receive any official documents from the Russian Federation. Rieger wrote to the Khamovnicheskiy Court after hearing in the media about his summons, which had not yet been received. Rieger then asked Federal Judge Danilkin to consent to him being questioned in Germany, by means of a live video-conference, with a pre-arranged date to allow all parties to fully participate. The defense included Rieger’s request in their motion filed by Lipster.
Also included in the defense motion were many references to Rieger’s interview by counsel, conducted in March 2010. Reiger described being detained at the Sheremetyevo Airport, then being taken for an interrogation conducted by investigator Rusanova. He described how Rusanova told him that as a witness he was not entitled to have an attorney present during the interrogation, while her colleagues were providing misleading information about his location to his attorney and a representative from the German Consulate, ultimately not letting them see Rieger.
Rieger also described how during the interrogation Rusanova asked him questions then presented him with written responses she wanted to him to confirm. According to Rieger’s deposition, all of Rusanova’s questions boiled down to asking him to confirm that Khodorkovsky stole billions of dollars. Rusanova then refused to let him leave, informing him that her superior, investigator Khatypov, was not satisfied with Rieger’s answers.
Ultimately, after 8 hours of continuous interrogation he was finally allowed to leave. Afterwards, Rieger noted, he was informed that the German Foreign Affairs Ministry sent an official note of protest concerning his illegal detention. The next day, when he attempted to leave Russia on a scheduled business trip, Rieger was detained once again. After an hour and a half of detntion, he was handed his travel documents and was strongly hinted to never to return to Russia.
On August 16, 2010, Judge Danilkin ruled to deny the defense’s motion to have the court officially request the German authorities facilitate Rieger’s appearance in court via a video-conference and to enter into evidence Rieger’s record of interview by counsel.
In its latest issue (No. 32, 09/08/10), German weekly “DER SPIEGEL” publishes a long written interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky (p. 72-76).
Therein, he comprehensively answers – from his prison cell – questions mainly concerning
– his former activities as a businessman – which, according to his statements, did never violate Russian laws
– his political activities – which included the financing of opposition parties but not the unrealistic plan to become president of Russia
– the Russian judicial system – which he criticizes as a corrupt system of mere punishment
– his future personal fate – about which, in his view, the final (political) decision has not yet been made
– the political future of his country – characterized by a need of modernization, which requires, in his assessment, effectively working democratic institutions.
In reply to the final question how long he will still be able to finance his defence and campaigns in his favour, Khodorkovsky answers that this family and friends would, according to their possibilities, continue this struggle even without him if justice could not be achieved during his lifetime.
I would like to add, once again, that there are some supporters in Russia and abroad for whom this struggle is part of their commitment to human rights and not a question of money.
Maren Koop
EU Russia centre reports
05 Aug 2010 — Germany
Here is reported on Markus Löning, new Human Rights Commissioner to the German government, who has been criticised due to his little experience in the field of human rights and is slowly gaining respect. According to the article Löning focuses on two aspects of his work: the abolition of the death penalty and the protection of the freedom of opinion and the press. Stawski states that Löning will visit the Mikhail Khodorkovsky trial in Moscow soon and wants to do everything to arouse the interest of the public on the case.
At the hearing in the Khamovnichesky District Court this week the prosecutors protested against adding the consolidated YUKOS accounting reports for 1997-2004 by PricewaterhouseCoopers to the case file; they said that the documents ‘aimed to confuse foreign investors’.
The court turned down the relevant petition filed by the defense team saying that their arguments “were not legal.”
It should be clear that the court’s decision not to allow the PWC audit reports to be used in evidence is perverse in the extreme, and designed to ensure that highly relevant opinions – those of the independent auditors – are not taken into account. If anyone doubted that this is a mockery of justice, the decision of the court in this matter should make it beyond question. This is a complete farce.
Book review written by Ed Hancox in The Mantle
http://www.mantlethought.org/content/oligarch-martyr
Putin’s Oil: The Yukos Affair and the Struggle for Russia
by Martin Sixsmith
Continuum, 2010, 311 pp.
It plays like a scene from a Hollywood thriller–a businessman in a desperate bid to conclude a deal he thinks will ensure his safety, sees his plans fall apart as masked gunmen board his private jet and take him off into a snowy Siberian evening. Only this wasn’t a scene from a summer blockbuster, it was instead the last moments of freedom for maverick Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who in the early 2000s engaged in a high-profile struggle with then-Russian President Vladimir Putin for control over the energy conglomerate Yukos – then Russia’s largest firm and the fourth-largest energy company in the world. Their fight, and Khodorkovsky’s subsequent fate, is the subject of a new book: Putin’s Oil: The Yukos Affair and the Struggle for Russia, by former BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith.
read more…
IL FOGLIO
21 July 2010
By Massimo Boffa
It has been about a month since the winds started changing for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev’s trial. It’s too soon to tell whether this is a real change of direction; however, something has happened, something that not so long ago was unthinkable and which has whipped commentators into a frenzy of interpretations and speculation.
This is the news: on the 21st and 22nd June, in the Khamovnichesky tribunal in Moscow, where the second trial against the former oligarch is taking place (accused of fraudulently stealing 350 million tonnes of oil from their own company, Yukos, between 1998 and 2003, which could give them a prison sentence of up to 22 years), two excellent defense witnesses arrived: German Gref and Viktor Khristenko. Gref is the former Minister for Finance and current CEO of Sberbank (currently the largest bank in Russia) and Khristenko is the currently the Minister for Finance in Putin’s government.
This is already an unlikely event: until now, the president of the tribunal, Viktor Danilkin, consistently refused political witnesses for the defence, starting from Putin himself. What is more important, however, is that both texts highlighted the absurdity of the charges brought by Valery Lakhtin. They have in fact stated that it was impossible that the theft of such a large amount of oil could pass unobserved by those responsible for the economy. Neither of these witnesses, who were in charge of the economy, ever noticed anything of the sort. To complicate things further, the number one news channel, who has followed the debate with little interest but in this case announced the news, if with much sobriety.
read more…
MOSCOW | Thu Jul 22, 2010 3:52pm BST
Reuters – The chief executive of Russia’s largest oil firm failed to appear in court on Thursday after being summoned to give evidence in the trial of jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
State controlled Rosneft rose to become Russia’s largest oil company by buying the main production assets of YUKOS, which was carved up after its owner Khodorkovsky fell foul of the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin.
Lawyers for Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year jail sentence, had asked the court to summon Rosneft CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov to give evidence in a new trial that could keep Khodorkovsky in prison for another 22 years.
But Bogdanchikov — the most prominent businessman yet called as a witness at the trial — failed to appear.
read more…
21 Jun 2010
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Communications Center
Today in the Khamovnichesky Court, German Gref, the Head of Sberbank and the former Industry and Trade Minister, has been giving his testimony. So far, after being questioned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself, Gref confirmed several of the defence team’s arguments, countering the prosecution’s indictment:
- Gref has confirmed that YUKOS’s purchases of oil from its subsidiaries at prices lower than those at European ports were completely legal. The difference in price could be explained by a number of factors, including export tax regulations. He noted: “They purchased oil from their subsidiaries legally, at the prices lower than European [prices]. This can be explained by the specifics of the export taxation [laws] at those times.”
- Gref said that – if all of YUKOS’s oil output (and 20 % of Russia’s total oil output) had been embezzled at any time between 2000 and 2007 – he would have learnt about it in one way or another.
Comment:
Mr Gref´s appearance in court led the ARD, one of Germany´s main television companies under public law, to broadcast an informative report about the second YUKOS trial in the day´s “Tagesschau” (8 p.m.). Therein, the legitimacy of the whole court proceedings was openly put into question. The ARD, as well as other TV channels, had been excluded from today´s hearing itself; however, they interviewed Mrs Moskalenko and Mr Rivkin, two members of the defence team, about the current events in the courtroom. The lawyers expressed their confidence that they would be able to reveal the truth with respect to the present legal case, with the help of the testimony of witnesses and also with the help of the partly absurd questions asked by the prosecutors and the judge. The report ended with the statement that Russia is still rather far away from being a state under the rule of law.
Maren Koop
Mikhail Khodorkovsky has objected to the court’s ruling which prevented expert Kevin Dages from presenting his research. He said:
“As his ruling, the judge said that the expert in international accounting has no relation to the case. Clearly this contradicts the materials of the case, the indictment, in particular book 7 of the indictment document contains a detailed analysis of the YUKOS accounting US GAAP reports by the prosecution. The judge also said that the accused are not accused of the actions related to the territories of foreign countries; this clearly contradicts a number of statements in the indictment regarding deals with international companies registered abroad, see p.20 of the indictment.
The judge also said that YUKOS was not an international company but a joint stock company, registered under the Russian legislation. This shows his deep misunderstanding of the merits of the case, it indicates that he is trying to avoid to get to the merits of the case, which is the only court’s responsibility, since all international companies are registered in this or that jurisdiction.
Pages 141-143 of the indictment document read that since the end of 2003 the YUKOS assets were located in its international companies and only later were they sold. International companies are listed in the indictment.
Neither the judge, nor the prosecutors are specialists in US GAAP accounting. Such specialists were not involved in the investigation despite the fact that the accounting report and the annexes to it provide the content for the book 131 of the criminal case and a number of other [case] books that the prosecutors refer to in their indictment.
All of the above leads to a conclusion that the judge has no intention to get to the merits of the case.”
