Yukos lawyers launch new parole request

The lawyers of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s business partner and co-defendant Platon Lebedev have filed a parole request with a court in Arkhangelsk Region.

An earlier request was thrown out by a court in Moscow, but after Lebedev was transfered to serve his sentence in Velsk, northwestern Russia, his lawyers are trying again.

He and Khodorkovsky are set to remain behind bars until 2016 after being convicted in two separate cases related to financial offenses during their time in charge of Yukos, Russia’s biggest oil company in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Tempers run high in Khodorkovsky trial

A day of dry, technical detail in court was enlivened when Mikhail Khodorkovsky embarked on a slanging match with prosecutor Valery Lakhtin.

Minister of Trade Viktor Khristenko was in the witness box at Moscow Khamovnichesky court when the row broke out.

In a tense, overcrowded courtroom the normally composed Khodorkovsky briefly lost his cool.

“Lakhtin is lying,” he shouted at the lanky state official.

It was a frequent accusation, but Lakhtin countered: “Prosecutors don’t lie.”

He did, however, accuse co-accused Platon Lebedev of misleading the court and the mass media over Monday’s testimony from Sberbank chief German Gref.

“They presented what Gref said yesterday inadequately,” he fumed towards the end of Khristenko’s time in the witness box.

The judge, tired, careworn and looking sad at times, wasn’t above rebuking the prosecutor. He repeatedly told Lakhtin to restate his questions and chided him for quoting extensively from a series of documents. At one point he sharply interrupted: “Did you hear me? I said I dismissed the question!”

Taking the stand Khristenko, like former Economic Development minister Gref before him, said that he knew nothing of the alleged theft.

“The actual theft of crude oil from pipelines is a problem that exists and will continue to exist. However, I am not aware of the theft of 350 million tons,” said Khristenko.

While answering Khodorkovsky’s questions, Khristenko said that Yukos was renting out some of their pipelines to Transneft. Yukos according to him was their biggest client. And if the crude oil had gone missing after the pipes had been rented, it fault for it would lie with Transneft, and not Yukos.

Khristenko also added that he had never heard of any Yukos subsidaries complaining about either oil gone missing, or oil not reaching its destination.

"We are satisfied with the answers we heard from Khristenko on the matter of oil theft,” said defence lawyer Konstantin Rivkin. “It destroys the charges against them to the core.”

And he claimed the “ugly” exchanges during the cross examination demonstrated the weakness of the case against Khodorkovsky and his colleague Platon Lebedev.

“The prosecution behaved quite disgracefully, demonstrating their helplessness,” he told journalists after the day’s hearing.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are already serving jail terms for tax offences relating to their time at Yukos. Many believe the court cases against them to be politically motivated and intended to bring about the collapse of the one-time oil giant.

Putin won’t be taking the stand in Khodorkovsky case

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will not be called on to testify at the second Mihkail Khodorkovsky trial.

A hearing at Khamovnichesky court dismissed calls for the PM to be questioned when the former Yukos chief faces theft and embezzlement charges later this summer.

Requests to put Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Deputy PM Igor Sechin on the stand were also turned down, though Minister of Trade and Industry Viktor Khristenko and Sberbank chief German Gref are set to appear on June 21 and 22.

Meanwhile Khodorkovsky is expected to end his hunger strike today after being informed that President Dmitry Medvedev had been made aware of his latest appeal against his pre-trial detention, RIA Novosti reports.

The former oil-tycoon sent an open letter to Supreme Court head Vyacheslav Lebedev on Monday, announcing the strike and demanding that President Dmitry Medvedev be informed that a presidential order was deliberately breached when Khodorkovsky and co-defendant Platon Lebedev were remanded in custody until August 17.

Since then, President Medvedev has been notified, and his press secretary confimed that he was made aware of Khodorkovsky’s plea, while judge Lebedev has pledged to review the case.

Khodorkovsky insists that “the presidential will has been ignored” since the pair are charged with economic offences – something which Medvedev had decreed should not lead to pre-trial custody.

The former Yukos chief is currently serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, and is now accused of stealing $9.6 billion from Yukos funds, along with 350 million tons of oil.

Judge Refuses to Dismiss Khodorkovsky Case

Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky must remain in jail and face a multibillion-dollar embezzlement case, a Moscow judge ruled Tuesday, refusing a defense request to dismiss the charges.During preliminary hearings that began two weeks ago, Khodorkovsky's lawyers had requested that charges against Khodorkovsky and business partner Platon Lebedev be thrown out.Judge Viktor Danilkin rejected those motions, as well as an argument that he recuse himself for purportedly showing bias against Khodorkovsky and his defense team.Danilkin ordered the trial to begin March 31 and said it would be open to the public.Defense lawyer Natalya Terekhova said after the hearing that the two men had listened to the judges "in the hope of hearing something unexpected, but nothing unexpected happened."In a closed-circuit TV broadcast from the inside the courtroom, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev could be seen standing calmly in their specially built iron and glass cage, fidgeting occasionally.Authorities filed new charges last month against Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, charging that he had committed large-scale fraud in the course of building up his Yukos oil empire. His supporters and Kremlin critics, however, see the new case as a politically driven effort to keep Khodorkovsky behind bars long past the next presidential election in 2012. Khodorkovsky, 45, was sentenced in 2005 to eight years in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges.

Khodorkovsky faces fresh charges

A Moscow judge has ordered ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky to be brought from his Siberian jail to Moscow, to face trial on new charges next month.
The judge also ordered the transfer of Platon Lebedev, Khodorkovsky's former business partner, from his prison in northern Russia to the capital.
Once Russia's richest man, Khodorkovsky was jailed for nine years in 2005 for tax evasion and other offences.
The former tycoon faces new theft and embezzlement charges.
Correspondents say the Russian authorities apparently want to keep Khodorkovsky behind bars well beyond the end of his first sentence.
BBC Russian affairs analyst Stephen Eke says the case no longer generates much public interest in Russia.
Supporters of the ex-boss of Russia's disbanded oil firm Yukos say the original charges were politically motivated because Khodorkovsky had funded Russian opposition groups.
'Ridiculous allegations'
"A judge of the Khamovnichesky [Moscow] district court handed down a ruling for the transfer under guard from places of detention to Moscow in respect of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev," the press secretary of Moscow City Court, Anna Usacheva, told Interfax news agency.
"Preliminary hearings in the new trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have been set for March 3," she said.
Khodorkovsky has been serving his sentence in Krasnokamensk, in the east Siberian region of Chita, close to the Chinese border, about 4,700km (3,000 miles) east of Moscow.
He remains a strong critic of the Kremlin, last year accusing Russian ex-President Vladimir Putin of having used the law to target political enemies, especially businessmen like himself.
Responding to the announcement of a new trial, his lawyers said: "The bureaucrats of the security forces have wasted many years, huge sums of state money and their own reputation by fabricating these ridiculous allegations."
Lebedev was also convicted of tax evasion at the same trial in 2005 and jailed for nine years.
Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil company, was declared bankrupt in 2006 and ceased to exist as a legal entity in November 2007.
The company had been steadily dismantled after being accused of massive fraud and tax evasion by the Russian authorities.
Yukos maintained it was the victim of a concerted political campaign by a government which wanted to discredit its executives and gain control of vital energy assets.
Russian officials deny the allegation.