| Mikhail Khodorkovsky was recognized as a tax evader The power outage that happened in Moscow yesterday did not in the least prevent the announcement of the verdict in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. It was this area that, ironically, ended up outside the emergency zone. However, the topic of the blackout enlivened the reading that had been going on for the second week in the Meshchansky court - both defendants asked those who came to court with interest about what was happening in the city.
To date, only the episodes of tax evasion from legal entities and individuals and the theft of funds belonging to YUKOS in favor of companies controlled by Vladimir Gusinsky have not been covered by the verdict. Yesterday, the Meshchansky Court completed the assessment of evidence regarding malicious failure to comply with the decision of the arbitration court to recognize a valid purchase and sale transaction of 20% of the shares of Apatit OJSC and found the defendants guilty. Then the court moved on to the next episode and found Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty of evading taxes from an individual in the amount of 54.5 million rubles. At the same time, the court qualified his actions under Art. 198-2 of the Criminal Code, which, as amended in December 2003, provides for a more lenient punishment, and excluded forgery of documents from the charge, since it was “overly imputed.” One of Platon Lebedev’s lawyers, Konstantin Rivkin, noted that, assessing this episode, judge Irina Kolesnikova “is bound by the guilty verdict in the case of the former head of the Yukos-Moscow company Vasily Shakhnovsky.” In February last year, the same judge Kolesnikova, with the same prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin, found Mr. Shakhnovsky guilty of tax evasion, sentencing him to one year in prison and releasing him “due to a change in the situation.” By this, in particular, it was meant that Shakhnovsky no longer occupied his previous position, and therefore did not pose a public danger. In addition, by the time of sentencing, he had paid all his tax debts. The same, however, applies to Khodorkovsky and Lebedev - they left their posts, and their friends paid their taxes.
Half of the verdict has already been read, but the lawyers are still pessimistic. “Having heard almost 50% of the verdict, it cannot be assessed from a legal point of view. The verbosity contained in the document is aimed at showing the significance and supposed fairness of the sentence. This is a farce and reprisal against our clients,” Lebedev’s lawyer, Elena Liptser, told reporters. Former Moscow City Court judge Olga Kudeshkina, who was present at the hearing yesterday, also gave her assessment of the verdict. “I see that both Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, as well as Pichugin earlier, are deprived of the right to a fair trial. And this can be regarded as a violation of Art. 6 of the Human Rights Convention,” the former judge told reporters during a break in the court hearing. In addition, Ms. Kudeshkina was outraged by the increased security measures at the court, which, in her opinion, limits citizens’ access to justice. “You need to go through four cordons to get to the Meshchansky Court,” she said. “Thus, the government has shown through its actions that it does not take human rights into account.” Ekaterina BUTORINA |
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