Live to see trial

Arrested Yukos Vice President Vasily Aleksanyan suffers from AIDS

The criminal case of Vasily Aleksanyan - vice-president of YUKOS, former head of the legal department of this company, formerly one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's lawyers - may soon be brought to court. As it became known, on January 15, he and his defenders signed a protocol on completion of familiarization with the case materials, according to which Mr. Aleksanyan is accused of theft of property of Tomskneft and the Eastern Oil Company (VNK), money laundering, as well as evasion of payment taxes. Yesterday in the Supreme Court, lawyers for the Yukos vice-president petitioned to change his preventive measure due to the presence of a serious illness. The prosecutor's office did not deny this fact, and its representative even announced that Vasily Aleksanyan had AIDS, thereby causing a protest from the lawyers. However, the prosecution sees no reason to release the defendant from custody and place him in a specialized clinic.

Vasily Aleksanyan was appointed vice-president of Yukos in early April 2006. And the Prosecutor General’s Office immediately filed claims against him, suspecting him of being an accomplice of an organized crime group involved in the theft of property of Tomskneft and VNK. Since Mr. Aleksanyan is a lawyer and has the appropriate certificate, in order to initiate a criminal case against him, a special permission from the court was required, which the Simonovsky court did not fail to issue. The Yukos vice-president was immediately detained, and the Basmanny court authorized the arrest. The Prosecutor General's Office charged Mr. Aleksanyan under three articles of the Criminal Code: embezzlement or embezzlement of someone else's property (Article 160), laundering of funds acquired as a result of his crime (Article 174-1), and evasion of taxes from an individual ( Art. 198).

According to the prosecution, the crimes were committed back in 1998-1999, when Vasily Aleksanyan held the position of head of the legal department of YUKOS. He acted as part of an organized criminal group, which, according to investigators, also included the former head of the same unit, Dmitry Gololobov (who is on the international wanted list), his employee Svetlana Bakhmina (sentenced to seven years in prison by the Simonovsky Court at the end of April 2006) , as well as the “ideological mastermind” of all criminal cases attributed by the prosecutor’s office to YUKOS, one of the company’s main shareholders Leonid Nevzlin, whose extradition from Israel to the Russian authorities was never achieved. According to the case materials, this organized crime group committed the theft of property of OJSC Tomskneft VNK and shares of oil refineries owned by OJSC Eastern Oil Company, for a total amount of about 12 billion rubles. The investigation believes that Aleksanyan, Gololobov and Nevzlin subsequently legalized this property. In addition, according to investigators, they illegally misappropriated Tomskneft property worth 8.6 billion rubles.

Vasily Aleksanyan, from the very beginning, cited the poor state of his health as one of the arguments for choosing a more lenient preventive measure for him. Then the court considered that he was quite capable of participating in investigative actions while in prison. However, as his lawyer Elena Lvova said and as the prisoner himself said in his open letter, in October last year his illnesses became critical. He constantly complained of high temperature, which was kept at 38 degrees every day. This, according to Mr. Aleksanyan, prevented him from getting acquainted with the case materials. The investigator even petitioned the court to cancel the arrest and release the Yukos vice-president on bail. But then, as Ms. Lvova said, for some reason he changed his mind and began to petition to extend the period of detention of his defendant, with which the court agreed. This period expires on March 2, and before that day, Vasily Aleksanyan’s case is expected to be brought to court. Although he himself no longer hopes to live to see the trial.

Yesterday in the Supreme Court, lawyer Elena Lvova once again petitioned to change the preventive measure, citing the illness of her client. And prosecutor Vladimir Khomutovsky unexpectedly explained that the defense presented additions to its complaint, in which “from page 12 we are talking about Aleksanyan’s illness with AIDS.” The lawyer insists on placing him in a specialized clinic. As Ms. Lvova reported, the European Court of Human Rights three times (once in October and twice in December last year) issued special decisions in which it insisted on the need to provide Mr. Aleksanyan with medical care and transfer from the Matrosskaya Tishina prison hospital, but the instructions of the European Court are still being ignored. The lawyer refuses to comment on whether her client has AIDS, but claims that he has serious symptoms of tuberculosis and is almost completely blind, so investigators are even forced to read the case materials out loud to him. “There is no help for Aleksanyan, no treatment is being carried out,” Ms. Lvova noted. -- On December 21, blood tests, biopsies and sputum were taken from him, but there are still no results from them. Also, Aleksanyan is not undergoing chemotherapy.”

Yesterday, the Supreme Court postponed the hearing to consider the appeal to extend the arrest until January 22, since the judges need time to familiarize themselves with the additions submitted by the lawyer. “I hope I’ll live another week,” said Vasily Aleksanyan, who participated in the court hearing via video broadcast from Matrosskaya Tishina.

And the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Kalinin, said yesterday that “the doctors of pre-trial detention center No. 1 are ready to provide the accused Aleksanyan with all the necessary assistance, but he refuses it, demanding hospitalization in another medical institution - outside the pre-trial detention center.” Mr. Kalinin did not confirm that Mr. Aleksanyan had AIDS, citing medical confidentiality, but said that there are currently 39 thousand HIV-infected people in prison: “They are kept together with other convicts and arrestees. I would also emphasize that they come to us already with HIV infection.”

Ekaterina BUTORINA