Case for millions

The prosecutor's office is trying to prove that Yukos evaded paying taxes

The Prosecutor General's Office again conducted searches in structures controlled by YUKOS. This time, investigators paid attention to the boarding lyceum in the village of Koralovo (Odintsovo district), financed by YUKOS, and the company’s business center in the village of Zhukovka. These activities, as stated by the prosecutor's office, were carried out as part of a "criminal case, which was initiated on the facts of causing property damage, theft, and tax evasion."

As it turned out, the Prosecutor General's Office has not lost interest in YUKOS. On the contrary, throughout the time that has passed since the searches at the company’s offices in July, investigators have been closely studying the materials received. As a result, they found where Yukos, according to prosecutors, stores archives that will help prove that the company evaded paying taxes. The “cache” turned out to be a boarding lyceum, which is financed by YUKOS and where a server that was previously at the disposal of the MENATEP group was brought back in 1997.

As stated by the First Deputy Head of the Department for Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Irina Aleshina, during earlier searches, documents were seized indicating tax evasion schemes amounting to millions of dollars, as well as diagrams that “indicate the location of MENATEP’s archival materials "and Yukos." “Based on one of these schemes, a search was carried out at the boarding school” and the server was seized, Ms. Aleshina said. As investigators previously alleged, in 1999, companies affiliated with MENATEP illegally received tax breaks in the Lesnoy Closed Administrative Unit in the amount of 9 billion rubles. However, only legal entities have the right to do this, 80% of whose activities are carried out on the territory of the closed administrative unit, and the companies were not such. In addition, they paid taxes to the local budget using Yukos promissory notes, which is contrary to the tax code.

On the same day, representatives of the prosecutor's office visited the YUKOS business center, located in the notorious village of Zhukovka. There, as Ms. Aleshina reported, a large number of documents were confiscated. They, according to the investigation, will make it possible to establish the amount of tax payments that Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s company and its divisions had to contribute to the budget starting in 1997. Attempts were also made to conduct a search in the office of Anton Drel, Platon Lebedev's lawyer, located in the business center. However, according to information available to YUKOS, Mr. Drel nevertheless avoided this procedure. Investigators were also interested in the office of one of the YUKOS shareholders - deputy and head of the tax subcommittee of the Duma budget committee Vladimir Dubov, from whom several documents were confiscated as a result of the search.

YUKOS, of course, does not recognize the prosecutor's office's accusations of tax evasion and believes, as stated in an official statement released on Friday, that “the obvious lack of logic in the actions of law enforcement officers suggests a desire to intimidate the shareholders and employees” of the company. YUKOS proposes holding open court hearings in cases related to the company as a way to resolve the situation, while accusing investigators of the fact that “refusing to use falsified testimony and stopping unprecedented pressure on witnesses could help put an end to this shameful history for the country.” "

Denis REBROV