Translated material
They will be honored
The Prosecutor General's Office found new witnesses in the YUKOS case, but lost the old one
The YUKOS case , which developed after the departure of the former Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, as it seemed from the outside, only by inertia, suddenly received a “new breath” yesterday. Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, speaking to reporters yesterday, reported a number of new details of this investigation, which, as it turned out, is very actively ongoing. It turned out that the case had new important testimony from former Yukos employees who returned to their homeland and are actively cooperating with the investigation. The Prosecutor General did not name specific names, but almost immediately information appeared that the investigators managed to “persuad” Alexei Golubovich , the ex-director for strategic planning of YUKOS and the former head of the investment department of Menatep Bank, to return from abroad.In addition, according to Mr. Chaika, in the near future new charges of embezzlement and money laundering will be brought against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. The Prosecutor General also spoke about a new version, according to which the YUKOS case may be connected with the mysterious death in London of retired FSB colonel Alexander Litvinenko. It also confirmed the disappearance of one of the defendants in the YUKOS case - Spanish citizen Antonio Valdes-Garcia.
“We do not give them any special guarantees (from persecution - Ed. ). But cooperation with the investigation will count for them,” Yuri Chaika said yesterday, talking about “a number of important witnesses from among high-ranking Yukos employees who are actively cooperating with the investigation.” As it turned out from the speech of the Prosecutor General, Russian detectives have repeatedly “been to London and other places where they talked with these people.” Investigators even managed to persuade one of the witnesses to return home.
Aleksei Golubovich gave testimony back in the spring, according to which some people tried to “buy” him and intimidate him. According to the former top manager, he was offered $25 million for non-disclosure of information about YUKOS activities, but he refused. Later, they allegedly tried to poison Golubovich and his family with mercury. According to the victim, Leonid Nevzlin could have been behind the assassination attempt. Golubovich’s conflict with him, according to him, arose due to the redistribution of shares and assets of the company transferred abroad. A warrant for the arrest of Golubovich on charges of fraud and failure to comply with court decisions was issued at the end of 2004. And since he disappeared, he was put on the wanted list. At the beginning of 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office sent a request to extradite Golubovich to the UK, where he was located. After this, the former top manager moved to Italy, where he lived on his own yacht, moored in the port of Viareggio near Pisa. It was there that Italian police detained him on May 10, 2006, while attempting to fly to the UK on a private jet. The basis was an international Interpol warrant issued at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office. Already in October, an Italian court refused to extradite Golubovich to Russia, but at the same time rumors appeared that Golubovich was actively meeting with investigators leading the YUKOS case and was not averse to returning to Russia, where he still has a wife.
On what conditions and when exactly Golubovich moved back to his homeland, Mr. Chaika did not specify yesterday. It is possible that he was promised not to add new charges to those already brought forward or to drop the case altogether due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.
The lawyers also knew nothing about the circumstances of Golubovich’s return. According to Platon Lebedev’s defender Evgeniy Baru, the connections between the Prosecutor General’s Office and Golubovich became known immediately after interviews appeared in the media talking about pressure on Golubovich from the remaining YUKOS shareholders. “For some reason he was silent about this before. This became an indicator that Golubovich is ready to incriminate,” Mr. Baru noted.
Yesterday it became known that the Prosecutor General's Office, having acquired one witness, lost another. Already during the trial that began in the Basmanny Court, another witness in the YUKOS case, Spanish citizen Antonio Valdes-Garcia, managed to escape from the guards. The former head of the Fargoil company (a subsidiary of YUKOS) is accused of embezzlement and money laundering. A year and a half ago, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, he himself flew to Moscow from Spain. He was met by security forces and taken to the riot police base, where he was kept for about a year, allegedly as part of the witness protection program. There, for unknown reasons, an incident occurred during which an ex-YUKOS employee jumped out of a window and broke his legs. Then he appeared in court as an accused. At the end of last year, during the debate between the parties, the state prosecution asked to sentence the accused (in addition to the Spaniard, ex-general director of the Ratibor company Vladimir Malakhovsky and former deputy director of the Yukos external debt directorate Vladimir Pereverzin were in the dock) to 11 years in prison. During the trial, Valdez-Garcia was under recognizance not to leave the place and lived in an apartment guarded by police. As it turned out, the Spaniard managed to lock his guards in the apartment and disappeared. The case in which Valdez-Garcia was involved may be related to new charges that may be brought against Lebedev and Khodorkovsky in the near future. We are talking about the sale of Yukos crude oil at reduced prices and the subsequent transfer of proceeds to foreign offshore companies. Now, according to the Prosecutor General, a criminal case has been opened against the police officers who let Valdez-Garcia go. The fugitive himself has not yet been put on the wanted list, since the necessary documents have not yet arrived at the court.
The Prosecutor General's Office does not lose hope of seeing Leonid Nevzlin. Yuri Chaika reported that, as part of cooperation with the British police in the “Litvinenko case,” Russian investigators intend to interrogate Yukos shareholder Leonid Nevzlin, who is hiding abroad. In addition, the Prosecutor General's Office has prepared a request in which it asks its British colleagues to carefully understand all the circumstances of the death of one of the founders of YUKOS, Yuri Golubev, on January 8 this year in London, since the Prosecutor General's Office has reason to believe that he died as a result of violent actions. Although British authorities previously stated that Mr. Golubev died of natural causes.