They confessed themselves

Prosecutors Valery Lakhtin and Gulchekhra Ibragimova, the most active representatives of the state prosecution in the second trial in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, admitted that a third case could be opened against the former entrepreneurs. In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda (from the text, however, it is not clear which of the newspaper’s two interlocutors is answering the questions), they stated that 18 accomplices of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are on the wanted list and “if during their search new facts of crimes are revealed, then the investigative authorities will be obliged to bring additional charges against them and send the case to court.” Prosecutors noted that the first process - about the seizure of shares of Apatit OJSC and tax evasion - was the result of processing only the first part of the case, which was handled by the Prosecutor General's Office. The investigation continued, “facts of the theft of oil and shares of subsidiaries of VNK OJSC were revealed - and a second case was opened.

It was said before that another case could be opened against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. The lawyers did not exclude this, and during the trial in the second case it turned out that the witnesses were again interrogated by the prosecutor's office.

The interview, in which the prosecution for the first time decided to talk to journalists after waiting for the verdict, is an appendix to a large material that sets out the position of the investigation and the prosecution regarding the actions of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. It describes how an unequal exchange was allegedly carried out between YUKOS and three controlled offshore companies: these companies were transferred “a small stake in YUKOS, and “they, in turn, exchanged them for a controlling stake in Tomskneft and other subsidiaries included in in the VNK,” the newspaper quotes some sources in the Prosecutor General’s Office. “To make the deal look legal, they even prepared a report from an “independent appraiser”, which confirmed that the stakes of shares were equivalent,” however, “as the investigation found out,” the stake in Yukos was worth just over 220 million rubles, and the stakes in Tomskneft and other companies - more than 3.6 billion rubles.

According to the state prosecution, the newspaper writes, Khodorkovsky, through shell companies, “gains control over the assets and puts in charge persons under his control, who began to approve the decisions made at the Yukos head office, namely: to whom to sell oil and for how much. As a result, the state, even owning 36% of VNK shares, could no longer influence the situation in its subsidiaries. Later, they say, the state came to its senses, inspections began and the first case was opened. “After this, Khodorkovsky, fearing trial, returned the shares, and in May 2002 he bought the state stake for $225 million. But by this time he had already managed to pump so much money out of the asset that this purchase did not burden his empire at all. Moreover, in fact, Khodorkovsky bought the state stake with the help of the money that he received as a result of the illegal disposal of these assets,” KP quotes the words of someone in the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The article also talks about the alleged resale of oil by some companies registered in closed towns to others of the same kind. These companies, according to investigators, “resold oil to each other, raised the price to close to the market price, and then sent the oil for export through Yukos,” where it was “purchased by a company controlled by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.” But at the same time, when oil was sold to YUKOS directly from production companies, YUKOS “presented a conclusion on the alleged market price of oil at 250 rubles per ton,” and at the end of the chain, a company controlled by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev “sold oil to end consumers” “already at the real market price ( at that time about 1,500 rubles per ton).”

When, as the newspaper writes, “complaints from shareholders began to pour into YUKOS, and claims from prosecutors began to pour into the courts,” “the scheme had to be changed,” and “since 2000, oil began to be sold at auctions in which front YUKOS companies participated,” with seemingly independent.

The article also mentions the appearance in court in the second case of the head of Sberbank German Gref and the Minister of Trade Viktor Khristenko, who in 1998-2000 held the posts of Deputy Minister of State Property and First Deputy Prime Minister of the Government, respectively. These defense witnesses admitted that they could not have known if more than 20% of Russian oil had disappeared from the pipeline. However, the newspaper points out that the indictment does not refer to the seizure of oil: “From the verdict it only follows that Khodorkovsky, using management and front companies controlled by him, purchased oil at a reduced price, drove it through a chain of internal and external offshore intermediaries and sold it to end consumers at real market price, which exceeded the purchase price by 3-6 times. And all the profits ended up in his pockets, and not in the wallets of other shareholders or in the federal budget.”

The newspaper cites the text of a memo addressed by Yukos lawyers to Khodorkovsky (and which received his resolution). Lawyers propose various schemes to “receive maximum profit and avoid responsibility”: “The management of enterprises should be transferred to a dummy mother-holding, which can be easily sacrificed in case of trouble.”

Finally, employees of the Prosecutor General’s Office told Komsomolskaya Pravda that Khodorkovsky had his sights set on the American stock market, but lawyers allegedly explained to him that “if all their frauds are revealed, then according to American laws he faces 20 years in prison.” The newspaper publishes correspondence between Khodorkovsky and YUKOS vice-president Oleg Sheiko, where the entrepreneur writes that he will not agree to place shares in the United States, “since with the political development of my career, in 5 years the American hook will become dangerous.” The Prosecutor General's Office states that this document suggests the following conclusion: “a man who was afraid of his criminal offenses even before American justice was eager to enter politics.”