Accusation after

Another Yukos case sent to court

The Prosecutor General's Office announced yesterday the completion of the investigation into a new case against the former acting. Alexey Kurtsin, manager of Yukos-Moscow LLC. Just like 1.5 years ago, he is accused of stealing funds from a company on an especially large scale under the guise of charitable assistance and their subsequent legalization. Together with Kurtsin, three more will be in the dock - the president of Amalgama DVD group LLC Boris Teremenko, assistant to State Duma deputy Alexander Goldman and Maria Tikhopoy. In relation to two more accomplices of Kurtsin, the materials have been separated into separate proceedings. This is the first vice-president of YUKOS-Moscow Mikhail Trushin and the economist of the Amalgama DVD group Elena Vybornova. They are in London, and the request for Trushin's extradition has not yet been satisfied.

According to investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office, Kurtsin and others stole 74 million rubles from their own company. It is noteworthy that Mr. Kurtsin was already convicted by the Lefortovo court on December 1, 2005, under exactly the same articles. Then the verdict, with its severity, shocked both journalists and the defendants and their relatives. The judge imposed much longer sentences on the convicts than the state prosecution requested. In particular, Alexey Kurtsin was sent to a maximum security colony for 14 years and ordered to pay a fine of 1 million rubles. And this despite the fact that the owners of YUKOS themselves, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, were sentenced to only eight years in a general regime colony on much more serious charges.

According to the materials of the new case against the former acting. managers of YUKOS-Moscow, the theft of money from YUKOS (which in this investigation acts as the injured party) was committed in April-June 2004. According to investigators, Alexey Kurtsin, together with the first vice-president of YUKOS-Moscow Mikhail Trushin, used a fairly simple scheme. Three public organizations registered in Moscow sent letters to YUKOS-Moscow with requests to provide financial assistance for their statutory activities. Under this pretext, money from YUKOS accounts was transferred to the RBOO "Coordination Center for Social Programs", which received 29 million rubles, the Monolit fund - 25 million rubles, the International Public Organization "New World-500" - 20 million rub. At the same time, according to the prosecutor’s office, Mr. Trushin made decisions on the allocation of funds for a “voluntary donation,” and Alexey Kurtsin signed the corresponding orders.

Accomplices of Kurtsin and Trushin, according to the Prosecutor General's Office, were the president of the Amalgama DVD group Boris Teremenko, the economist of this company Elena Vybornova, as well as Goldman and Tikhopoy. They allegedly helped subsequently “legalize these funds by carrying out various fictitious financial transactions and transactions with them.” “Ultimately, the money was cashed using counterfeit checks from the shell companies Diatontorg and Vilar-Lux at the Moscow commercial bank Neftyanoy (in 2005, it was deprived of its license for systematic cashing of money) and divided among the participants in accordance with the role of each in the organized group,” the Prosecutor General’s Office noted in an official statement yesterday.

The materials of the new case about the theft of funds from the Yukos Oil Company by Kurtsin and others actually repeat the wording of the first conviction of the former acting. manager of Yukos-Moscow, who in December 2005 was sentenced to 14 years in prison. However, Kurtsin was not allowed to serve this term in peace. Taking into account the consideration of the cassation appeal, he ended up in a colony in Mordovia only in May last year, and a month later he was transferred to Moscow and again placed in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center. Goldman and Teremenko spent several months there with him. Maria Tikhopa was left under recognizance not to leave.

According to Kurtsin’s lawyer Yuri Larin, his client’s role in the “theft of YUKOS money” was to sign technical documents for the accounting department on the transfer of money to charity. Moreover, the signing of the papers took place after the actual payments were made, which is reflected in the accused’s email. Mr. Larin claims that draft orders and accompanying documents for coordinating or approving money transfers for all three episodes, indicating the date and time of receipt of the letter, can be obtained by examining the information from the system unit of Kurtsin’s desktop computer. However, according to the lawyer, the investigators deliberately did not include in the case materials data indicating his client’s innocence.

Tatiana GRITSENKO