The preliminary hearings of the second trial of former Yukos CEO, who was the most powerful oil company in the country, opened today in Moscow. Nearly four years after his conviction for fraud and tax evasion, Mikhail Khodorkhovski faces new charges of "embezzlement," "diversion fund "and" illegal financial transactions.
"I promise you the transparency and clarity. I will not shirk. I guarantee you there will be entertainment. "Khodorkovsky is what has given this weekend in her lawyers to address reporters he can not meet. Even dress - fine glasses, jeans, sweatshirt - even militancy displayed, as if to taunt the power that sent him to rot in the Siberian Chita Camp, fifteen inmates per cell and two visits of three hours per month.
Arrested in fall 2003 for fraud and tax evasion, sentenced in 2005 to eight years hard labor, Khodorkovsky and his former associate, Platon Lebedev, are now accused of stealing 102 million worth of Yukos shares and 350 million tons of crude oil to $ 25 billion.
This implies that the two men allegedly stole and laundered the entire oil production subsidiaries of Yukos over six years. "These accusations are totally crazy. The instruction trample the rule of law! "Screams the Canadian lawyer Robert Amsterdam, joined Monday in London because they can not go to Moscow.
"Violations of the proceedings"
"I had access to the fourteen volumes of the file. There is no respect for laws, no logic. This is again an instruction to load, "insists Vadim Kliouvgant, the Russian lawyer who follows the new investigation especially two years ago.
"Lawyers intimidated witnesses jailed ... Long is the list of procedural violations. This trial should not even be able to stand as it is flawed! "Complains Robert Amsterdam, who claims a mistrial. "I'm waiting to see what will transpire in these preliminary hearings, but after more than five years on the case and after so much suffering, I do not think anyone can afford to hope," says the lawyer again Canada.
In the fall, Khodorkovsky has led all the faithful. After three years in prison, his former vice-president Vasily Aleksanian, with AIDS and cancer, was released on bail in December. "Released" means that the guards left the room where he remains hospitalized. Svetlana Bakhmina, the former lawyer of the group, had no such luck. Sentenced in 2004 to six and a half years in prison for complicity in the theft and tax fraud, she just gave birth in prison with her third child. A petition for his release gathers 93,588 signatures, mobilization rare in a country where the fallen oligarch and his associates are always treated as thieves.
The latest study by the Levada Institute, conducted in October to mark the fifth anniversary of the arrest of Khodorkovsky, reveals that only 7% of respondents show him "sympathy and respect" while the majority states not interested in his case.
In 2003, when the first arrests, Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote: "Once it has shown Putin who was the head and aura stripped of his millions, hopefully it will calm. "But you do not calm down so easily Vladimir Putin:" I think I have been far too optimistic, "she admits today. While Putin is no longer president, he is always the one who decides. While he is in business, Khodorkovsky rot in jail. Putin is not one to forget. "
In January, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has agreed to review the complaint filed by former shareholders of Yukos. They accuse the Russian government of having illegally seized the company (the group disbanded in favor of State Rosneft) and claimed more than 30 million euros.
A decision that somewhat comforting Robert Amsterdam: "In these times of economic crisis World, one is tempted to ignore the rights of man. I think instead that it is time to return to the fundamentals because it is the excesses of the rule of law that led us into an impasse. "
Madeleine Leroyer, Moscow
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