Moscow dismisses criticism of tycoon trial

MOSCOW HAS chided the West for criticising the conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, telling it to stop meddling in a case that has fuelled major doubts about the independence of the country’s legal system.

Mr Khodorkovsky and his former partner in the now defunct Yukos oil firm, Platon Lebedev, were found guilty this week of embezzlement and money laundering, and are expected to have their current jail terms extended to 2017 in the coming days.

The United States, major European states and the European Union have expressed deep concern over a trial that is widely seen as part of prime minister Vladimir Putin’s drive to neutralise a man whose vast wealth and independence made him dangerous adversary.

Before his arrest in 2003, Mr Khodorkovsky made Yukos the most successful and transparent of Russian oil firms but, unlike most other “oligarchs”, he also helped to fund opposition parties and criticised Mr Putin’s running of a country choked by corruption and bureaucracy.

Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev were arrested in 2003 and jailed two years later for fraud and tax evasion, after which Yukos was broken up and its prime assets were swallowed by state-run firms loyal to Mr Putin.

Russian officials insist the legal process against the men is fair and free from political influence, but the latest verdict was unexpectedly postponed earlier this month; the next day Mr Putin castigated Mr Khodorkovsky on state television and said “thieves should sit in jail”.

“Attempts to put pressure on the court are unacceptable,” Russia’s foreign ministry said yesterday. “We are counting on everyone to mind his own business – both at home and in the international arena.”

The ministry said the former Yukos bosses were accused of particularly serious financial crimes, “for which terms of life imprisonment are given in the United States. Assertions about the selective application of justice in Russia are groundless,” the statement continued.

“Russian courts deal with thousands of cases related to the responsibility of businessmen before the law.”

After the verdict was delivered on Monday, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the ruling “raises serious questions about selective prosecution – and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations”, while German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said the trial’s conduct “was extremely dubious and a step backward” for Russia.

In a diplomatic cable last year, US diplomats said the case against Mr Khodorkovsky and Yukos was “clearly political” and that Russia had “applied a double standard to the illegal activities of 1990s oligarchs; if it were otherwise, virtually every other oligarch would be on trial alongside Khodorkovsky and Lebedev”.

Judge Viktor Danilkin continued reading his 800-page verdict yesterday and is expected to deliver sentence later this week.

“It is very difficult to understand what is being uttered, and second, when you do manage to capture something, it is difficult to understand its logic,” Mr Khodorkovsky’s lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, said.