Translated material
The European process has begun
The Strasbourg court sided with the Yukos co-owner
The former head of the Menatep MFO and co-owner of YUKOS Platon Lebedev, who has already served half of the eight-year sentence on his first sentence, and is now in the Chita pre-trial detention center getting acquainted with the materials of the second criminal case (about the theft of 450 billion rubles and 7.5 billion dollars), will receive a small compensation from the Russian treasury for the moral suffering suffered in prison. Mr. Lebedev himself estimated the material and moral damage incurred due to the unlawful arrest at $1 million and 300 thousand euros, respectively, but in the end he will receive 3 thousand euros. This is yesterday's decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) , which found that the Russian authorities violated Mr. Lebedev's right to freedom and security of person. Another 7 thousand euros will be paid to him to cover legal costs.In the practice of the ECHR, this amount for which Russia was punished this time is far from the most outstanding. However, this decision may well turn out to be a landmark one, opening a new page in the saga around YUKOS. Until now, the relationship between the Russian authorities and representatives of this company has developed only in one direction, harshly accusatory. Now a kind of countdown has begun - already in favor of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's associates and subordinates.
The complaint considered by the ECHR is the first in a series of appeals filed in Strasbourg by the lawyers of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev and the YUKOS company itself, regarding the illegal, in their opinion, arrests of the former owners of the oil company, the injustice of the sentence imposed on them and the unlawful destruction of the corporation. And although the first compensation looks completely symbolic, this does not detract from its significance: most likely, now all their other complaints will not go unnoticed by Strasbourg. Moreover, the complaint considered contained, perhaps, the least fundamental claims.
The complaint “Lebedev v. Russia” was filed by his lawyers in 2004, a year after the arrest of the former head of Menatep. This is how the ECHR put it in its ruling: “Before the events described below, Mr. Lebedev was one of the leading executives of Yukos, a large oil company. On June 20, 2003, the prosecutor's office began a criminal investigation against a group of top managers of Yukos and their affiliated companies, suspecting them of fraud during the privatization of a state company committed in 1994. Several months later, several of them were arrested and charged, including Mr. Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos. The rest left Russia out of fear of criminal prosecution.” On July 2, 2003, Lebedev decided to go to the hospital for examination in connection with chronic diseases: vegetative-vascular dystonia, arrhythmia, hypertension and hepatitis B. “As follows from the medical report made in July 2003 by Mr. Lebedev’s attending physician, he suffered from chronic hepatitis , which could lead to internal hemorrhage and death,” notes the ECHR ruling. But the businessman failed to receive treatment - on the same day he was arrested by officers of the Prosecutor General's Office on suspicion of involvement in these criminal cases. The next day, Lebedev was charged with fraud and failure to comply with a court decision. The prosecutor's office argued that in 1994 the applicant deceived the state: through a privatization tender, he bought a share of the large enterprise Apatit, but did not invest in this company, although this was stipulated by the terms of the competition. Moreover, Lebedev later disobeyed the court decision, which ordered the return of the received share of the plant to the state.
The applicant's lawyers objected to his arrest and argued that his state of health was incompatible with detention. They asked the prosecutor's office to conduct a full medical examination of Lebedev's condition, but she had already filed a petition for detention in the Basmanny Court. The lawyers did not come to this meeting, and the court did not wait for them and postpone consideration of the issue of arrest, agreeing with the prosecution that everyone was duly notified of the place and time of its holding. The defenders claimed that they received notice only two hours before the start of the hearing, and when they arrived at the court, they could not get into the courtroom because “the judge locked the door and refused to let them in.”
The Basmanny court authorized the arrest, considering that Lebedev, while remaining at large, could hide from the investigation and trial abroad (because he has a foreign passport), put pressure on witnesses, destroy evidence and in every possible way impede the investigation. At the same time, the court did not indicate the period of arrest in its decision, but the Moscow City Court approved this decision, without finding any violations of the rights of the accused or his lawyers.
On August 20, 2003, the investigation into the case of Platon Lebedev was completed, and two days later the lawyers began familiarizing themselves with his materials. In October, the Basmanny Court extended the period of detention until the end of the year, and then until the end of March 2004. The lawyers complained, but each time to no avail.
After reading the case on March 26, 2004, the Prosecutor General's Office transferred it for consideration to the Meshchansky Court. On April 6, the court scheduled a preliminary hearing for April 15 and ordered the defendant to remain in custody. As noted in the ECHR ruling, “no reasons were given for this.” The lawyers immediately complained that during the period from March 30 to April 6, 2004, their client was under arrest illegally - during this period, no court decision was made on the issue of choosing a preventive measure. The court objected - from the moment the case is transferred from the Prosecutor General's Office to them, the accused is automatically “listed for trial” and will remain in custody for the entire period of the trial.
In early June, the Meshchansky Court decided to combine the case of Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky into one proceeding. A process began that lasted a whole year, and in May 2005, the disgraced oligarch and his business associate were sentenced to nine years in a general regime colony. In October, however, the Moscow City Court reduced their sentence by a year, excluding several episodes from the charges.
In his complaint to the ECHR, Mr. Lebedev indicated, in addition, that all court hearings on issues of election or extension of arrest were held behind closed doors, the Moscow City Court each time took too much time to consider complaints from lawyers about decisions of a lower instance, and his lawyers , who were working on an appeal to the ECHR, were sometimes specifically not allowed to see Mr. Lebedev.
However, the ECHR indicated that court hearings on arrest issues do not necessarily have to be public and open, and in this regard did not find any violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. As for the lawyers who were unable to get into the courtroom on July 3, 2003, the ECHR noted that Article 5 of the convention (the right to freedom and security of person) does not contain any reference to mandatory legal support for the person in respect of whom the question of arrest is being raised. “However, certain features of this case forced the court to deviate from this general rule,” the ECHR said in its ruling. - First of all, the trial for choosing a preventive measure took place the next day after the applicant’s arrest, and on the same day he was charged, when he was preparing to give counter-arguments to the prosecutor’s office. Moreover, the applicant was brought to court directly from the hospital, where he was staying due to his chronic illnesses. Even if the applicant had been able to attend the trial in person, his state of health was not normal and some legal support would therefore have been at least advisable, especially given the fact that representatives of the prosecutor's office were present in the courtroom. Finally, the court emphasizes that the applicant had already hired lawyers who were informed by the investigator about the hearing and were ready to participate in it.” The ECHR also found a violation of Article 5 of the convention that during the period from March 30 to April 6, Mr. Lebedev was under arrest without court authorization. The court also found that in two cases the time frame for considering arrest complaints was too long.
Mr. Lebedev asked the ECHR to oblige Russia to pay him approximately $1 million in compensation for material damage, since while in prison he could not “engage in his professional activities,” and 300 thousand euros in compensation for moral damage. However, the court considered it necessary to compensate only for moral damage and assessed it a hundred times cheaper - at 3 thousand euros.