Translated material
Along the way
The formal reason for launching an investigation by the Prosecutor General's Office against YUKOS, as far as we know, was a request made on June 6, 1993 by State Duma deputy Vladimir Yudin about the legality of the privatization of the Apatit mining and processing plant in 1994. A few days later, the “main” criminal case was opened - about theft and tax evasion by structures controlled by the Yukos Oil Company, from which dozens of criminal cases against specific employees of the company subsequently began to “split off”. For the first month, the investigation was conducted in conditions of heightened secrecy, and the interest of the Prosecutor General's Office in YUKOS became known only on July 2, 2003, when the chairman of the board of directors of the Menatep MFO, Platon Lebedev, was arrested. Moreover, it turned out that he was not the first prisoner in the growing criminal epic. As the Prosecutor General's Office announced then, on June 19, 2003, the head of the 4th department of the YUKOS internal and economic security service, Alexey Pichugin, was detained. He was accused of organizing the kidnapping and murder of Tambov businessman Sergei Gorin and his wife, assassination attempts on the former head of Rosprom Sergei Kolesov and Khodorkovsky's former adviser, employee of the public relations department of the Moscow mayor's office Olga Kostina. Later, in the Pichugin case, the Prosecutor General’s Office indicted in absentia the Yukos shareholder and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s closest associate, Leonid Nevzlin, who had fled to Israel. According to investigators, it was from him that Pichugin received tasks to eliminate people unwanted by the company.
After the arrest of Platon Lebedev, events developed rapidly - reports of new charges and searches were received weekly. Meanwhile, the investigation into the case of Mr. Lebedev himself was completed in record time - in just two months. At first he was accused of theft of 20% of the shares of Apatit OJSC, then he was charged with a number of articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Already on August 25, the head of the Menatep MFO had the opportunity to get acquainted with 162 volumes of the criminal case. But it seemed to the Prosecutor General’s Office that the businessman was deliberately delaying the study of the materials, and new charges were brought against him.
The Prosecutor General's Office warns
At first, the Prosecutor General's Office was not very concerned about Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself, and until a certain moment no one could even believe that he, the head of the largest oil company in Russia at that time, could go to prison. He was interrogated only a few times as a witness shortly after the arrest of Platon Lebedev, and then left alone for a long time. But in the fall of 2003, subordinates of Prosecutor General Ustinov began to directly hint that there were serious claims against Mr. Khodorkovsky.
On October 17, 2003, Yukos shareholder, general director of the Yukos-Moscow company Vasily Shakhnovsky was summoned to the Prosecutor General's Office and, after interrogation, left the building already accused, having given a written undertaking not to leave. He was accused of non-payment of 29 million rubles. taxes. On the same days, two deputy prosecutor generals, Vladimir Kolesnikov and Yuri Biryukov, made unequivocal statements. “So this begs the question: is the money not stolen? - said Mr. Biryukov, commenting on the progress of the investigation. - I am convinced that Khodorkovsky, as the head of the company, is responsible for the violations that were committed by his employees. That is, if he violated the law, he must be held accountable.” Vladimir Kolesnikov spoke even more clearly: “The prosecutor’s office has serious claims against a number of leaders of the Yukos Oil Company; I will not hide that some of them will be charged. I personally would not like to see Khodorkovsky behind bars. But there’s no need to cheat, don’t cheat – you’ll have to answer for everything.”
Mr. Khodorkovsky said a little earlier that the Prosecutor General’s Office is trying to force him to flee abroad: “If the goal is to push me out of the country or put me in prison, then I need to be imprisoned, since I will not be a political emigrant.” Since the head of YUKOS did not leave Russia even after the warnings of Messrs. Biryukov and Kolesnikov, the investigators heeded his advice.
On October 25, 2003, at Novosibirsk airport at about 9.00 local time (5 am Moscow time), Mr. Khodorkovsky's plane, which was heading to Irkutsk, landed to refuel. As soon as the plane stopped, it was blocked by FSB officers. Entering the salon, one of the counterintelligence officers approached Mr. Khodorkovsky and said: “We have an order, you must come with us.” To which the businessman calmly replied: “Okay, let’s go.” On the same day, Mr. Khodorkovsky was taken to Moscow, in the evening the Basmanny Court considered the issue of arrest for half an hour, after which the head of YUKOS was taken to the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, where everything was ready for his appearance.
The investigation into Khodorkovsky’s case was also completed in a record two months, and already at the end of 2003 he had the opportunity to familiarize himself with the prosecution materials. The claims of the Prosecutor General's Office against the head of YUKOS completely repeated what investigators had previously accused Platon Lebedev of. Both were charged with over a dozen crimes as part of an organized crime group - theft of other people's property; malicious failure to comply with a court decision that has entered into legal force; causing property damage to owners through deception; tax evasion from organizations and individuals; forgery of documents; misappropriation or embezzlement of someone else's property by an organized group on a large scale. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, according to investigators, in 1994 created an organized criminal group in order to fraudulently obtain shares of various enterprises, then sell them at reduced prices to controlled intermediary companies, which in turn sold them at market prices. In particular, according to the Prosecutor General's Office, this is how 20% of the shares of Apatit OJSC, owned by the state, were stolen in 1994-1995. At the request of the Russian Federal Property Fund (RFFI), the arbitration court declared the transaction with the purchase of shares illegal and ordered the papers to be returned to the state, but this court decision was never implemented - the shares were transferred to foreign companies. Moreover, they allegedly did this with the help of a company controlled by Khodorkovsky, AOZT Volna, whose general director, Andrei Krainov, according to the prosecution, was part of the organized crime group of the head of YUKOS. In April of this year, the Prosecutor General's Office announced its intention to bring a number of new charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev - for “laundering” billions of rubles.
Offensive on all fronts
Soon after the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Prosecutor General's Office launched a “general offensive” against YUKOS, constantly adding to the list of accused throughout the subsequent period. On January 24, 2004, the Basmanny Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of another largest shareholder of YUKOS, Leonid Nevzlin, who had previously left for Israel. In addition to the charges related to Pichugin’s case, the Prosecutor General’s Office considers him guilty of tax evasion and misappropriation of shares in Tomskneft OJSC in the amount of $39 million. At the same time, the Basmanny Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of Group Menatep shareholders, former State Duma deputy Vladimir Dubov and Mikhail Brudno. In September 2004, the former head of the regional business department of Rosprom CJSC Natalya Chernysheva and the deputy chief accountant of the Yukos Oil Company Dmitry Maruev were put on the international wanted list. In November 2004, the chief lawyer of the Yukos oil company, Dmitry Gololobov, was put on the wanted list; a month later, the deputy head of the legal department of Yukos, Svetlana Bakhmina, and the former deputy director of the external debt directorate of the Yukos oil company, Vladimir Pereverzin, were arrested. In February of this year, on the recommendation of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Basmanny Court authorized the arrest of the acting President of YUKOS RM Mikhail Efremov. A few days later, the first vice-president of YUKOS-Moscow, Mikhail Trushin, was put on the wanted list. Just recently - on May 13 - the Prosecutor General's Office put the former deputy chairman of the board of the Yukos oil company, Alexandra Temerko, on the wanted list. As a result, at the moment the list of defendants in the YUKOS cases has already exceeded 30 people, most of whom, however, still remain abroad and are inaccessible to the investigation.
Sentenced
The first “real” - recognized by the court - criminal from YUKOS was the former head of the YUKOS-Moscow company Vasily Shakhnovsky. On February 5, 2004, the same Meshchansky District Court of Moscow found him guilty of tax evasion. Mr. Shakhnovsky received one year in prison, but was immediately released from punishment “due to a change in the situation.”
The Yukos security service employee, Alexei Pichugin, continued the “judicial relay race” of YUKOS. On March 30 of this year, after a jury verdict, he was found guilty by the Moscow City Court of organizing attempts and murders and sentenced to 20 years in prison. True, his trial, unlike the trial of Mr. Shakhnovsky, was accompanied by many scandals. First, the court decided to change the composition of the jury. Then the leadership of the Moscow City Court accused Mr. Pichugin’s defenders of violating lawyer’s ethics. In response, the lawyers openly accused the court of bias.
The trial of Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky began separately in the Meshchansky Court a year ago. At first, Mr. Lebedev appeared in court in April, but later, at the request of the defense, the judge agreed to wait until Mr. Khodorkovsky finished reading his case and combine them into one proceeding. In essence, the consideration of their case began in July 2004.