On the tenth anniversary of the YUKOS case, Forbes publishes the memoirs of the former deputy head of the company's external debt directorate, Vladimir Pereverzin, who received 11 years in a maximum security colony

On July 2, 2003, the chairman of the board of directors of the Menatep MFO, Platon Lebedev, was detained in Moscow. This is how a criminal case began in Russia, which changed Russian business and politics, and the country too. Four months later, Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky was detained at Tolmachevo airport. The fate of the leaders of the disgraced company, who still remain in prison, is well known. However, in the YUKOS case there were many other, less noticeable, but no less dramatic episodes. The book “Ordinary Mayhem” is published by Alpina Publisher. Its author is Vladimir Pereverzin, former deputy director of the external debt directorate of the Yukos oil company, sentenced to 11 years in a maximum security colony. Forbes publishes excerpts from this book.

November 2004. My father calls me, in whose apartment I am registered. “Volodya, you have received a summons for questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office,” he tells me. I take the summons and, naive, go to the Prosecutor General's Office. I'm going with a lawyer. The first interrogation in a gloomy building in Technical Lane. On the advice of a lawyer provided to me by YUKOS, I refused to testify, citing Article 51 of the Constitution. But then, at the end of November 2004, leaving the building, I carefreely returned to my normal routine. Now, analyzing what happened, I understand that this was my fatal mistake.

New Year's eve. Pre-holiday bustle, buying gifts and preparing for the holiday is in full swing. Tickets purchased and hotel paid. Our whole family decided to celebrate the New Year in Prague. I'm full of troubles and worries. Sixteenth December 2004. Restaurant "Noah's Ark". I'm having a business lunch with the chairman of the board of one of the banks. Suddenly the phone rings. An unfamiliar voice is heard on the phone:

“Vladimir Ivanovich?”

“Yes,” I answer.

“Investigator Asadulin is bothering you. Could you come to Bolshaya Pionerskaya, building 20?”

“I can’t today,” I say. “I’ll come tomorrow.”

The investigator insists: “No, we need to come today, for about twenty minutes!”

I finish lunch and drive to the indicated address. There is the DRO - Department of Security Facilities - Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. A kind of state within a state. Its own operational search bureau. Its own wiretapping, its own surveillance and other secret services.

I arrived at this very DRO, I asked the investigator at the checkpoint, and there was an ambush! They were waiting for me. Time 14:15. They surrounded me, attacked me, and handed me a summons for questioning at the General Prosecutor's Office at 15:00 at 2 Tekhnichesky Lane. They invited me to go into a police car - a gazelle with the inscription "Traffic Inspectorate". I am sincerely perplexed by what is happening and ask: “Why all this masquerade, why couldn’t I just have been given a summons to the Prosecutor General’s Office?” The question hangs in the air. Later it turned out that after the first interrogation at the Prosecutor General's Office, I was placed under surveillance. That day they lost me and decided to lure me into a trap in such a “cunning” way. That's how I was caught. I would not be surprised if someone received an order, medal or promotion for this “special operation”.

Thanks to the valor and courage of the DRO employees, I was taken under escort for interrogation to Tekhnicheskiy Lane exactly at the appointed time. In other words, I was simply kidnapped by police officers. They take me to the Prosecutor General's Office building, we go up to the fourth floor. We go into the office, unfamiliar faces flash by. Later I find out their names - Karimov, Khatypov, Alyshev, Rusanova, Ganiev... I refuse the services of a lawyer, they hand me a warrant to search the apartment, where we are going with the whole crowd. No one at home. We invite witnesses. I call my close friend Leonid and ask him to come urgently. They searched everywhere. They turned everything over, opened the ceilings in the bathroom, climbed all the cabinets, climbed under the bathtub, rummaged through things. I don’t know what they were looking for. I don't think they knew what they were looking for. I'm not missing anything. After the search we return to the Prosecutor General's Office. Again an interrogation - a conversation without a lawyer, whose services I refuse. I am handed a detention order. Investigator Khatypov kindly allows me to call my wife and inform her about the arrest. It's about twelve at night.

I squeeze out the words:

“Ira, I was arrested.”

“It’s good to joke!” - She doesn’t believe me.

“Yes, they definitely arrested me,” I continue to insist and give the phone to the investigator.

From the General Prosecutor's Office they take me to Bolshaya Pionerskaya Street to the DRO. I am taken to the local leadership office. Office No. 3. A small reception area with two offices. Head and Deputy Head of the Eighth Directorate. Colonel Florinsky and Lieutenant Colonel Zelepuskinkov, in whose office I will spend the rest of the night. My watchmen are sitting here, not taking their eyes off me. At night, another comrade in civilian clothes comes in, asking about my life. He reports that the general will arrive soon and will decide everything.

An ordinary-looking man of average height comes into the office and says hello. The guards leave and we are left alone. The person who enters introduces himself as the head of the team providing operational support for the process. He tells me his rank and shows me his ID. He does this very strangely: he does not let go of the document from his hands, covering his last name with his little finger. In the photograph I really see a man in the uniform of a major general. This is not a formal interrogation, but a conversation. He strongly advises me to confess everything. Not understanding what I have to confess, I look at him like he’s crazy.

“You don’t know what we have on you!” - he says, taking a sheet of paper from his briefcase. The sheet turns out to be a resume that I had previously sent to recruiting agencies.

“We are not interested in you,” this guy continues. - Give evidence against Brudno, Lebedev, Khodorkovsky and go home, live in peace. You just have to admit it."

I don't understand what I have to confess.

“Yes, they will give you twelve years, you will not be released on parole, and when you are released, your son will grow up and send you to three letters, your wife will leave you...”

This general, named Yurcheko, was far from crazy and was not talking nonsense. In fact, he turned out to be clairvoyant and knew what he was saying. After two years and eight months, which I will spend in prisons, I will be given eleven years of strict regime. I won't be released on parole. I will serve my sentence to the end. The conversation continues for several hours. They persuade me, threaten me, convince me. I have nothing to admit, I do not have secret knowledge and cannot convey anything interesting.

We don't understand each other and speak different languages, we are both tired. Finally the “friendly” conversation ends. We each go about our own business. The general is going to perform other feats, and I am being taken to the temporary detention center, which is very close, on Shchipok Street, hiding behind a gate with the inscription “Fire Department, Ministry of Emergency Situations.” They search me, take away my belt, laces, watch, money, documents and take me to a darkened cell measuring two by three meters. Adjacent to the wall are wide wooden bunks intended for several people, a pedestal with a hole for dealing with natural needs, and a washbasin without taps (the water is opened from the outside by an overseer, for which you need to knock on the door). On the walls, the so-called fur coat is a relief concrete coating in the recesses of which dirt accumulates.

Again there is a clanging and grinding of metal, the door opens, and they ask me to leave. They came for me. They put him in handcuffs, put him in the back seat of a seventh model Zhiguli car without identification marks and take him for interrogation to the Prosecutor General's Office. We go up to the already familiar office, where the investigators are waiting for me. A lot of them. They offer me a lawyer, whose services I stubbornly refuse. I ask to be given the opportunity to call, which I am also denied. The conversation begins. Someone comes in and out, someone plays the role of an evil investigator, and someone is a good one. They recommend that I confess and testify before it’s too late. Friendly conversation is clearly not possible. One investigator, a small, frail man, dressed in a gray suit, tie and white socks, breaks down. He squeals and sputters: “Ivanovich! You are Russian! What do you need these Jews, these Borisovichs?!”

The team of investigators for our case was assembled from all corners of our vast homeland. The best personnel were called up. But it is possible that the local authorities decided to get rid of the worst ones. The core of the group is representatives of Bashkiria. The head of the investigation team is Karimov, his deputy is Khatypov and Ganiev. There were also representatives from Volgograd, Belgorod, Kursk and even Michurinsk... They came to conquer Moscow and made a dizzying career.

I really don't understand what I'm being accused of. “Kind” investigator Khatypov politely offers me tea, Bashkir honey, horse sausage and draws prospects for liberation. I don't feel like eating at all. Sleep too. I don’t want to invent something that didn’t exist, just as I don’t want horse sausage. The conversation is clearly not going well...

Having never tasted Bashkir honey, I return to the temporary detention facility. It seemed that I had just closed my eyes for a moment, and already the iron door was rumbling again and I was being taken for interrogation. I will not return to the temporary detention center that day. The very forty-eight hours during which they have the right to keep me here will end. They only had two options. Either let me go home, or bring charges and resolve the issue with the court about the preventive measure. Just decide. While at the prosecutor's office, I accidentally overheard a conversation between two investigators.

“We just need to warn the Fairy,” says one to the other.

“Yes, I already called her back, everything is fine,” another responds casually.

Later I find out that this is what they affectionately called the chairman of the Basmanny Court among themselves. That day would be my first acquaintance with the court, whose name gave rise to the phrase “Basmannian justice.” Here I will see Mr. Lakhtin for the first time, who brazenly and cynically lied that I could hide and should be kept in prison. My words that I came for questioning voluntarily and had no intention of hiding from anyone remain unheard. The judge quickly, as if casually, decides on the issue of my arrest. Easily and naturally, as if drinking a glass of cold water, she makes a decision: “Due to the special danger and the possibility of escaping, we will choose arrest as a preventive measure.” Dot. I perceive the arrest as someone’s evil or bad joke.

I am being presented with a preliminary charge, which will be re-presented later, having been edited. It is impossible to understand what I am accused of. In prison slang, this document is called “obebon.” I found a lawyer, Yartykh, whom I sincerely asked to explain the meaning of the charges brought against me. On the “obebone” (sorry for the profanity, but I can’t call that paper any other word) I wrote: “The accusation is not clear to me.” Later I refuse the services of this lawyer.

From the court they take me in a paddy wagon to Butyrka. They take me to the assembly room - a room where people can be kept for as long as they like until they are distributed to cells. I don’t understand what I’m being accused of, I’ve been racking my brains for a long time. We are talking about oil theft. While working at a Yukos subsidiary in Cyprus, I did not sign a single payment document.

The YUKOS structure included several oil producing companies, each of which could theoretically independently sell oil. But since all these companies had one owner, a single centralized structure was created in the holding, which was responsible for the sale of oil from all producing companies included in YUKOS. For this purpose, special trading companies were created, in one of which I worked. Trading companies bought oil from oil producing companies, such as Yuganskneftegaz, and resold it to the end consumer. As a result, shareholders received significant savings due to cost reduction (there was no need to maintain a staff of sales specialists in each oil-producing company), and the profits received by traders remained with the same shareholders, since all these companies were part of the same holding - YUKOS. There was nothing new in this scheme: all large companies worked and continue to work this way.

The company where I worked bought oil from Yukos. Since I was not involved in payments and did not even have the right to manage the accounts from which all payments were made, I have a thought that I immediately discard: what if they didn’t pay for the oil? For all settlements and account management, a specialized financial company was created in Switzerland, which made all payments. “No, this can’t be! - I argue desperately. “I myself asked our auditors for account statements, all contracts, they checked everything!”

Understanding will come much later, so for a long time I cannot understand what kind of theft we are talking about. As it turned out, according to the prosecution, oil was stolen from oil producing companies. All that was extracted during the entire existence of YUKOS! And even a little more. When? Where? It turns out that they stole it at the very moment when, for example, Yuganskneftegaz was selling this very oil to a trading company, at the moment when the money for the sold, that is, “stolen” oil was transferred to the account of Yuganskneftegaz.

Back then, during the assembly, I still didn’t know and didn’t understand all this...

Prison universities

I am given a beat-up mattress, a blanket, wretched government linen, aluminum utensils and taken to a cell. Quadruple cell with broken window. There are already two here, one of them has just been brought in too. We are getting acquainted. Gena, an experienced prisoner, about thirty-four years old, becomes the first teacher at my prison universities.

We are in a boiler hut (chamber), where all the roads converge. Rope woven from threads connects almost all the cells of the Butyrka prison. Cargoes travel along these roads - coffee, tea, cigarettes and little things - prisoners' correspondence. Experienced Gena masterfully manages these threads: receives prison mail, sorts it, rearranges something, forwards it further to recipients in another prison building... He doesn’t stop for a minute - he will sleep during the day when the road is closed. I look at this action with fascination and perceive what is happening as a small adventure.

The night passes unnoticed. We know that morning has come by the clanging of an open feeder, from which a simple breakfast appears - a piece of bread, a liquid called tea, and porridge... I try to eat the prison gruel, but I can’t do it. I haven’t slept or eaten for three days. The clang of metal on metal. The longitudinal, in other words, the warden, knocks with the key to the cell on the iron door. He calls my last name and says: “With things according to the season.” They take me to the next preventative conversation at the prosecutor's office. Without a lawyer.

At this time, the lawyer and all my relatives are in a panic approaching shock. For them I disappeared again. The Prosecutor General's Office informed my lawyer that I was in Matrosskaya Tishina. Having stood in a decent line, he, to his surprise, finds out that I am not there. He goes back to the prosecutor's office, where he is informed about an alleged mistake and... again they deceive him. The lawyer goes to Butyrka prison. But at this very time I was transferred to Sailor's Silence. Imagine the lawyer’s surprise and the horror of my loved ones when they didn’t find me there either...

Torture in the prosecutor's office does not last long. Realizing that I am insane, the investigators let me go... to prison. I have three police guards and a personal car - the sixth model of a Lada. We are going to Sailor's Silence. A huge metal gate, the so-called sump, where my guards hand over their weapons. Barking dogs. We are entering the territory.

The jailers are clearly not happy about my arrival. After some arguing, some papers are signed, and I am handed over. The prison accepts me.

Sailor's silence

They take me into the courtyard of the prison, where I wait for something for a long time. I don’t know what time it is anymore—he’s lost count. The watch, which for some unknown reason is a prohibited item, was confiscated from me back in Butyrka and “forgot” to return it. They take me inside the prison and lock me in a glass - a small dark room where you can only stand. No, there is a kind of bench there - a board about ten centimeters wide, attached to the wall and, obviously, intended not for sitting, but for mockery. I’m sure that some specialist from the Research Institute of the Federal Penitentiary Service (there actually is one!) wrote at least a Ph.D. thesis on a topic like this: “The influence of inhumane conditions of detention on the detection of crimes.” Indeed, many people dream of leaving prison as quickly as possible to go to the zone. I was no exception, but more on that later...

I stay in the glass for a very long time. I am taken for a medical examination, where a gloomy orderly uses a huge syringe with a blunt needle to take blood from a vein to test for HIV. Looking at me carefully, for some reason he shares his misfortune with me.

“I don’t like working here, the aura is bad,” he says thoughtfully.

“Where did you work before?” - I’m interested.

“In the morgue,” he replies and sighs heavily.

They take a photo of me “as a souvenir,” for my personal file, and again they take my fingerprints. They give you a mattress, linen, a spoon, a mug, a bowl and take you to a cell. Small specialist, cell 412. I remember this moment well - it is firmly etched in my memory. It was already a real prison. The brakes opened - the door - and I entered the cell. The smell, dim light, ropes stretched lengthwise and crosswise, on which things are dried, which, by definition, cannot dry due to the overcrowding of the chamber and are only saturated with the smell. Broken walls. People are everywhere, they fill all the space. It was like walking into a crowded bus. Some are standing, some are sitting, some are lying. The devastation is complete. I have never seen anything like this even in a movie.

The cell contains eight bunk iron beds, standing close to each other, for forty people. There are not enough places, they sleep in turns. I enter, say hello, and ask who is watching. This is a prisoner who is responsible for maintaining the prison way of life - not established by the administration, that is, not the Musorsky regime, but human order. We are getting acquainted. Zhenya - Artist - a prisoner with experience, a drug addict, he has HIV. When he was free, he worked as a restorer after graduating from a specialized school. Arrested under Article 158 (theft). Having learned that I went to prison for the first time, he conducts an educational program. Do not shake hands with the offended (there is such a caste of untouchables among the prisoners), do not take anything from their hands, do not use the toilet (dalnyak) when someone is eating. The rules, in general, are simple and clear.

I tell you about myself - who and where I come from. From our cell, along the prison road, a drive goes through the entire prison - a little thing: they say, the first-timer, Volodya Pereverzin from Chertanovo, who had not previously been imprisoned, came to see us, under articles 160 and 174.1. This is done everywhere and always in order to question and punish prisoners for past misdeeds and sins. The prison community lives by its own, sometimes fairer - human - rules of life. Nothing can be hidden here. Being twenty-four hours a day under the close attention of fellow inmates, you become clear to others. I'm getting into prison life. They give me a bunk where I can rest. I don’t want to sleep, although I’m already on my fourth day of being awake. We talk with Zhenya for a long time. He draws postcards for the entire prison. He is respected and in demand. Grateful prisoners send him tea and cigarettes via cable cars. Everyone has their own role here. There is a road worker - a person who stands on the prison road and is responsible for the prison's unofficial logistics. Gradually I get to know the other inhabitants of the cell.

The camera is missing everything. Air, food, free space, tea, cigarettes. There are no books, no newspapers, no television, radio is prohibited. But there is a lot of free time. Everyone is trying to occupy themselves with something, to pass the time. Endless conversations, sometimes completely meaningless and empty, and sometimes very interesting. I'm talking to a guy who mentions his friendship with the man who was in this cell before me. He calls the surname Malakhovsky. This surname is already known to me, although I have not yet met him personally. I admit the idea that I could have seen him at YUKOS, for example, at the next table in the dining room. I ask my interlocutor about Malakhovsky’s age. He voices his approximate age and confidentially tells him that he is friends with him and knows which cell he is in. And right now, at this very moment, he writes him a little letter, kindly offering to add something himself. Reason prevailed over a fleeting desire, and I did not do it. Later, I found myself in similar situations more than once. I sat in the cells where Pichugin was before me, and came across people who were imprisoned with Kurtsin. Only now do I realize that I was literally walking on the edge of a knife. An ordinary office encounter with them could result in additional years in prison for all of us.

We will all meet as free people in November 2012, eight years later. Sveta Bakhmina, Malakhovsky, Kurtsin and me. “Here’s the whole gang assembled,” one of us will joke bitterly. Between the four of us we served about thirty years...

Life

Finally a lawyer finds me. On the same day they bring me a package with everything I need. Soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, change of clothes, tea, coffee, sweets.…

Life is starting to get better. In prison it is customary to share. If you receive a transfer, give it to everyone. And the general stuff will be redistributed by those looking at the camera among those in need, who are the majority. For the first time I get enough sleep, falling into complete oblivion. I sleep once every three days. There is noise and din in the cell, which merges into a constant hum that prevents you from falling asleep. Until you reach a state of complete exhaustion, you will not fall asleep. I don’t pay any attention to the bedbugs and cockroaches that infest everything. But I watch with amazement and incomprehension as my cellmates struggle with a scourge unknown to me - lice. They use a homemade boiler to boil laundry in a basin, and use matches to burn the seams on things where these insects accumulate. I watch for a short time, until the very moment I feel that someone is crawling on me. I take off my T-shirt and am horrified to see dozens of insects peacefully grazing in my underwear, as well as many laid eggs. I am enthusiastically joining this fight. It was impossible to defeat lice under those conditions, but inflicting serious damage on the enemy in a local conflict was a completely feasible task...

The New Year is approaching - 2005. The camera lives its own life. Once a week we are taken to the shower, which for some reason is always stubbornly called a bathhouse. There is incredible dirt in the shower, the walls are covered in some kind of slime, there are knee-deep puddles on the floor. Some prisoners never leave their cell at all. It is unknown what is better - dirt or some kind of infection from the shower... I miraculously manage to avoid both.

The camera is getting ready for the holiday. Simple food was divided into parts, chifir was brewed, sweets and chocolate were divided. Everyone is slightly nervous. Everyone hopes that this New Year will bring good luck and will be the first and last time in prison.

Suddenly a riot broke out. The brakes open and the guards jump into the cell. We are all taken out into the corridor (into the corridor) and put in a cage. I watch in amazement as the simple belongings of the arrested, which are considered illegal, fly out of the door, some things fly, and homemade cards fall out. The shelves, lovingly glued together by the prisoner in order to somehow embellish the wretched life, are mercilessly torn off and fly out of the cell... The search suddenly ends, and we return to the cell. There is a real pogrom there. Everything is upside down. There is a mountain of things on the floor - the jailers shook out the contents of our bags into one big pile and mixed everything up... “Oh, bitches,” I say, and I begin to sincerely hate garbage.

I will survive hundreds of similar troubles. There were cases when guards simply stole my things, not hesitating to appropriate T-shirts, pens and cigarettes. It happened that the searches took place quite civilly, within the bounds of decency. But I could never get used to it, accept it. Until the last day, this procedure always bothered me and made me feel disgusted...

Date

The sound of iron on iron. They call my name. I ask the guard: “Where are we going?” “For a short date,” he snaps. We are taken into a small, shabby room with a long table on which telephones are placed. There is a chair in front of each telephone. I sit down on one of them and see in front of me a grate and a window with dirty glass. The door opens and I see people running into the room and starting to rush around desperately, trying to find their loved ones. Time is limited. I see my wife, I see my father, who rushes to the phone standing in front of me. Almost nothing can be heard. I don’t hear, but rather read on my lips the question: “How are you?” I try my best to smile, but I look lost. I have a lump in my throat, I can’t speak... The date ends. It seems to me that not even five minutes have passed, although it lasted a full thirty. I am in a lot of pain and difficulty, physically ill. “The main thing is that everyone is alive and well,” I reassure myself. This was the last time I saw my father close. He died during the trial without waiting for me.

It takes me a long time to come to my senses after a first date. Not even a few days pass before I am transferred to another cell. I roll up the mattress and collect my things. I say goodbye to the guys with whom I literally lived side by side for more than a month.

Again, endless corridors with dim lighting. We go down into some kind of underground tunnel connecting the buildings. We are going to the sixth building of Sailor's Silence. Cell 601, sixth floor. My escort cannot find the longitudinal one who has the key to the cell. I put my things on the floor and sit down on the mattress. Suddenly I see Platon Lebedev walking down the corridor, accompanied by a warden. He is taken to the next cell. He is dressed in a tracksuit and is very haggard. I look at him, trying to say something. Once upon a time, even before my work at YUKOS, we knew each other. I haven't seen him for five years. He didn't recognize me then. Like me, Lebedev did not yet know that he was my “accomplice”. I will learn about this only in August 2010, when he and Khodorkovsky will be tried by the Khamovnichesky Court...

There is a key to the camera. The door opens and I walk into a spacious, half-empty six-person cell. There are two people there. I already know one of them - Seryozha was sitting with me in the minor when he was transferred here. Here he is already serving another prisoner of about fifty-five - Misha Dashevsky. Misha was already waiting for me. He is an obvious bitch and knows from the operatives about my arrival. Before me, he was sitting in the next cell with Lebedev. He talks about it a lot, watching my reaction. He offers to bring a mobile phone, vodka, and whatever delicacies your heart desires for money. He boasts about how well he sat here with some deputy minister and celebrated the New Year. He's not lying. But I’m not very interested in all this, and I’m content with the assortment of the prison store. The cell has an unheard of luxury - a shower. I wash myself thoroughly and wash all my things, getting rid of lice...

I have been in this cell for several days. One day a convoy comes for me and takes me for interrogation to the Prosecutor General's Office. Hurray, I see white snow from the car window, I see the sky and the sun!

The idyll ends in the prosecutor's office building. In the corridor I meet Sveta Bakhmina. No, she doesn’t walk, but moves slowly, holding onto the wall. Her face is white as chalk, her gaze is fixed on one point. Obviously, she sees nothing and no one around. Two policemen are supporting her by the hands so that she doesn’t fall... Sveta, at that time the mother of two young children, was actually tortured. They take me for interrogation to an already familiar office, to already familiar investigators. Conversation again. Again empty talk. They ask me strange questions: have I ever been to Samara or Nefteyugansk?

Not understanding where they are leading, I honestly say that I was not there. I'm lucky. Otherwise, this would serve as “proof” of a prior criminal conspiracy. The investigators don’t like my stories; they are clearly disappointed. Salavat Karimov looks in and tells me in broken Russian that you can’t sit on two chairs. He runs the show here, he’s in charge here. Investigator Rusanova takes the protocol of my interrogation to him, after a while he returns and with a smile on his face solemnly reports: “Salavat Kunakbaevich asked me to say hello to you and to inform you that they will give you twelve years.” My vision is getting dark. I no longer take them for madmen, like the general who came to me on the first night. I understand that there is nothing human in these people, that they are capable of anything. I had nothing more to talk to them about, and, alas, I could not help them in any way. This was my last interrogation without a lawyer.

Warn the Fairy: the YUKOS case through the eyes of its participant