Where there are two, there are three

Former employee of Bank MENATEP and YUKOS Nadezhda Shek announced at the next meeting on the second case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev in the Khamovnichesky Court that she was summoned for questioning in a certain new case brought against the defendants.

Answering Lebedev’s questions on November 23, Shek said that in addition to the interrogation in the winter of 2000, the investigator called her recently, namely on November 18, and said that “on another matter.” This happened two days before Shek first appeared in the Khamovnichesky court as a witness in the second Khodorkovsky-Lebedev case.

Prosecutor Lakhtin immediately said that if the witness tells more about this interrogation, she will violate the criminal law, which confirmed the assumption that a third case has actually been opened against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. Judge Viktor Danilkin ordered Lebedev's questions about Shek's interrogations on November 18 to be withdrawn. Shek managed to add that, as she was told, “several cases have been opened against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev” and she was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The judge, following the prosecutor, threatened Shek with criminal prosecution if she gave information about the interrogation on November 18.

In response to this, Lebedev objected that the court does not know whether investigators interrogated Shek in any case in 2000 or in what case she was interrogated the other day, so the presiding judge cannot prohibit the witness from testifying. Khodorkovsky's lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant called this secret investigation illegal and accused the court of intimidating a witness and pandering to the prosecutor's office.