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.

• Read 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

“Witness Bogdanchikov did not appear. The reason is unknown,” Judge Viktor Danilkin said in court.

The judge gave no more details and court officials refused to comment on the situation.
Spokesmen for Rosneft refused repeated requests for comment.

A Russian government source said Bogdanchikov on Thursday had met Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is also Rosneft board chairman, about investments in the southern region of Kabardino-Balkaria. A power station in the region was attacked by insurgents on Wednesday.

“The court was given no explanation for the absence of the witness though according to the law he should immediately inform the court giving serious grounds. This was not done,” Vadim Klyuvgant, Khodorkovsky’s lead lawyer, told reporters.

Khodorkovsky’s business empire — which pumped more oil than OPEC member Qatar — was carved up and sold to state-controlled companies after his 2003 arrest.

Khodorkovsky has always said he is the victim of corrupt officials under Putin who feared his political ambitions and wanted to carve up his YUKOS oil company, which was once widely held by U.S. and European emerging market investment funds.

Putin, who stepped down as Kremlin chief in 2008 and is now prime minister, has rejected any hint of politics in the case against Khodorkovsky, whom he has compared to U.S. gangster Al Capone.

Reader comment:
Jul 22, 2010 4:25pm BST

The comment by prime minister Putin comparing Mikhail Khodorkovsky to a gangster was prejudicial to a fair trial, the trial being under way at the time. Although the trial is universally recognised as a pseudo-legal charade intended to keep Khodorkovsky in jail, nonetheless it was extremely injudicious for Putin to make his invidious – and untruthful – comparison. Putin also sought to interfere in the trial by alleging on national tv last December that certain murders were ordered by the Yukos chiefs, for which there is no evidence. The Russian prime minister must not interfere or put pressure in judicial proceedings, if they are to be seen to be fair. There is however no chance that the current trial will be seen as fair by any observers except the coterie of shills.

Language note: “shill” – According to the Wikipedia definition, “The term is also used to describe a person who is paid to help a political party or other advocacy organization to gain adherents; as with the situation of selling goods or services, the shill gives the impression of being unrelated to the group in question, and gives the impression that he or she finds merit in the ideological claims of the political party.” The internet is used by certain Putin supporters whose advocacy frequently gives the appearance of being tainted.

By Alex Anishyuk

Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Monday that he approached then-President Vladimir Putin three times for an explanation on the Yukos crackdown before Putin indicated that it was because Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky had bankrolled the Communist Party.

Kasyanov, who was fired by Putin and is now an outspoken critic of the Kremlin, spoke for the first time about the meeting with Putin while testifying on Khodorkovsky’s behalf in a Moscow court.

Khodorkovsky and a second Yukos owner, Platon Lebedev, are being tried on embezzlement and money-laundering charges in a second trial that could add 22 years to the eight years they are already serving for a conviction on fraud and tax evasion charges in 2005.

Kasyanov told the Khamovnichesky District Court that the changes were politically motivated and contradicted the everyday practices of oil companies.

“By the end of 2003, I had a clear understanding that both were arrested under political motives,” he said.

Kasyanov said he tried to talk with Putin after Lebedev was arrested in July 2003 and Khodorkovsky was arrested in October that year, but Putin refused to discuss the issue with him. Only on the third try did Putin reply, he said.

“I asked Putin to clarify what he knew about the situation, but he refused twice, and then he gave me an answer,” Kasyanov said.

“He said Yukos financed Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, political parties that it was allowed to finance, but also the Communist Party, which it wasn’t allowed to.

“Then I asked him what he knew about the charges brought by the Prosecutor General’s Office, and he replied that the Prosecutor General’s Office knew best.”

Khodorkovsky was detained just weeks before State Duma elections in a crackdown that his supporters say was Kremlin punishment for Khodorkovsky’s political and commercial ambitions.

Yabloko and the now-defunct Union of Right Forces, liberal parties that lost their Duma seats in the December 2003 elections, have acknowledged being partially financed by Khodorkovsky. Speculation surfaced at the time of Khodorkovsky’s arrest that he had also supported the Communist Party, which won a scant 13 percent of the vote, its worst showing in years, but the Communists denied it.

A Communist Duma deputy, Sergei Obukhov, said Monday that he knew of no instance of his party accepting money from Khodorkovsky.

“The information on our funding is open and transparent, and no one has found any evidence of our party being funded by Yukos so far,” he told The Moscow Times. “If you find any evidence, please show it to us.”

Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin said that Khodorkovsky had funded his party for about a year, until his arrest, and that the arrangement had received Putin’s blessing.

“The information was public and the money was transferred in an open manner. No dummy companies were involved,” Mitrokhin said by telephone.

“It is true that at the time there was a rule, an unofficial one, of course, that Putin assigned companies to fund certain parties. Everyone got funds with his permission,” he said.

Calls to the cell phones of former Union of Right Forces leaders Boris Nemtsov and Irina Khakamada went unanswered.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had no knowledge about the conversation described by Kasyanov and could not confirm whether it had taken place and, if so, what had been discussed.

Khodorkovsky last month asked the court to summon Putin along with more than 250 other witnesses, but the court rejected the request as “premature,” noting that Khodorkovsky himself was still testifying at the time.

The court, however, agreed to summon several members of Kasyanov’s Cabinet, including Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko and Sberbank chief executive German Gref, who are supposed to testify next month.

Kasyanov on Monday seemed to confirm speculation that Putin and Khodorkovsky had a falling out as the result of a meeting the two attended with other business leaders in February 2003.

“In 2003, during a meeting between Vladimir Putin and businessmen, Mikhail Khodorkovsky spoke about openly corrupt deals like, for example, the acquisition of Severnaya Neft by Rosneft,” Kasyanov said. He said Yukos wasn’t privatized in a transparent manner, either. Starting from that point, I got the feeling that the authorities were going after businesses,” he said.

“The president’s reaction was extremely harsh.

State-owned Rosneft bought Severnaya Neft, a minor oil company, from Senator Andrei Vavilov in early 2003 for $600 million, a price that analysts said amounted to double the market price.

Kasyanov said his own disagreements with Putin regarding his policies started shortly after the meeting. Putin fired Kasyanov in February 2004.

Turning to the ongoing trial against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, Kasyanov derided prosecutors’ charges that the two stole 350 million metric tons of oil worth $30 billion between 1998 and 2003.

“The volume reported [to have been stolen], the 350 million metric tons of oil, is comparable to the amount that Yukos could drill,” he said. “But talking of a theft on this scale — my answer is no, that just can’t be true.”

Prosecutors summoned 51 witnesses, including former Yukos senior executive Alexei Golubovich and former bankruptcy commissioner Eduard Rebgun, before wrapping up their case in March. But none directly confirmed that they had witnessed oil theft.

Speaking about the essence of the charges, Kasyanov said it was normal practice for the subsidiary to sell oil to the parent company at a discount.

“Of course those were the internal prices. They differed from those on European stock exchanges and were significantly lower,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine that the oil price in Omsk would be the same as, for example, in Rotterdam.”

He said eight of the other nine companies that drilled 90 percent of the country’s oil and gas did the same.

In terms of tax payments, he said, Yukos consistently ranked in the middle or better in comparison with other oil companies. He said he wasn’t informed about any problems regarding Yukos at the time.

 Khodorkovsky’s lawyer said his client was going on hunger strike because he believed “the presidential will had been ignored” when Judge Viktor Danilkin on May 14 extended his and his business companion Platon Lebedev’s detention in a Moscow prison until August 17.

 Once Russia’s richest man said the decision violated a decree put forward by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, stating that individuals charged with economic crimes cannot be held in pre-trial custody.

 Khodorkovsky sent a letter to the head of the Supreme Court, Vyacheslav Lebedev, saying his hunger strike, which he began on Monday, would continue until Medvedev was told what was going on.

 Kremlin spokesperson Nataliya Timakova said on Tuesday that Medvedev had been informed about Khodorkovsky’s hunger strike.

 ”We believe that the Mikhail’s goal was achieved,” Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Yuri Shmidt said.

 Conditions at pre-trial detention facilities where Khodorkovsky is being held are harsher than in an ordinary Russian prison or labor camp. However, his defense counsel said Khodorkovsky was not so much concerned about his own situation as about the ruling setting a precedent for others accused of economic crimes.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, was arrested in 2003 after falling foul of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, and is serving an eight-year sentence for tax evasion after a trial his supporters dismissed as a farce.

Last week Khodorkovsky’s detention in Moscow’s notorious Sailor’s Rest prison was extended by three months by the judge in a second trial which could lead to him being sentenced to an additional 22 years on charges of theft and money laundering.

The Russian News Service radio station posted a letter on its website (www.rusnovosti.ru), addressed by Khodorkovsky to the head of the Russian Supreme Court, demanding that President Dmitry Medvedev be informed about the illegality of the decision to extend his detention.

“I declare an indefinite hunger strike until I get confirmation that Medvedev has received … comprehensive information” about the decision, the letter says.

Khodorkovsky last year went on hunger strike for almost two weeks in protest at the treatment of a jailed colleague who was gravely ill with HIV/AIDS. He ended the protest when Vasily Alexanian was moved to a civilian clinic.

Tomsk News

[Today,] on 15 May, United Civil Front, a public movement to protect democratic freedom, and united democratic movement Solidarity will hold a picket in support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Tomsk City of Russia; this is to mark the fifth anniversary of his conviction.

Ivan Tiutrin, the head of Solidarity, says that “the first trial brought a lot of confusion but the second one made things clear as it showed the case [against the YUKOS executives] is undoubtedly politically motivated. We believe that Mikhail Khodorkovsky is being persecuted for political reasons and are against it.”

The words of Mr Tiutrin provide a very short summary of how the attitude of many human rights activists developed, in Russia as well as in Western countries.

Unfortunately, this estimation was confirmed again yesterday, when the Khamovnichesky court in Moscow ruled to extend the detention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev for another three months, until August 17. Their lawyers earlier contested the motion concerning this matter, referring to the amendments of the Russian Criminal and Criminal-Procedural Codes which were enforced on April 7, 2010, softening the punishment for economic crimes. As far as I am informed, these amendments, following the death of Sergey Magnitsky in prison, were issued not least in order to abolish pre-trial detention in connection with supposed economic crimes. If they are not applied to this special case, the present decision amounts, in my view,  more than ever to an arbitrary persecution for no other conceivable reasons than political ones.

Maren Koop