Trial of Russia's Khodorkovsky Put Off to July 12

Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's $1 billion fraud trial was adjourned on Wednesday in another false start to the country's highest-profile prosecution since the 1991 fall of communism.



The court will reconvene on July 12 after it accepted a defense petition for more time to review case documents, tribunal chairwoman Irina Kolesnikova said.


Khodorkovsky, the main owner of oil major YUKOS, was brought to the court from jail, handcuffed to a security guard. He and co-defendant Platon Lebedev, wearing zip-up track suits, were placed in the cage reserved for those charged in criminal trials.


But the hearing was adjourned after less than two hours.


Procedural sparring means the court has yet to address the seven counts against Khodorkovsky, 40, who faces 10 years in jail if convicted for his role in the 1994 privatisation of a fertilizer firm and tax evasion.


There is little doubt over the ultimate outcome, however, with even Khodorkovsky's defense team predicting a guilty verdict in a prosecution it has denounced as illegal.


Khodorkovsky's lawyer Anton Drel said he was determined to fight for as long as possible, and forecast that a final verdict, after possible appeals, might not be handed down until toward the end of the year.


"This is going to be a long trial," Drel told Reuters.


RECKONING


The trial marks a reckoning for the "oligarchs" who gained vast wealth and power in the breakneck privatisations of the 1990s while most Russians suffered a plunge in living standards.


Khodorkovsky, who denied the charges when his trial opened last Wednesday, became Russia's richest man after snapping up YUKOS at a rock-bottom price under the "loans for shares" privatisation scheme of the Boris Yeltsin era.


But many believe it was his support for the liberal opposition and refusal to defer to President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) that led to his arrest last October and prosecution. Other plutocrats who stayed out of politics remained free.


Another court resumed hearings over when YUKOS must pay a $3.4 billion back-tax claim which the company said could bankrupt it if a freeze on asset disposals remains in force.


Putin said last Thursday, however, that YUKOS -- one of Russia's most profitable companies -- should not be allowed to go bust. Senior government officials said this week that talks had begun on a possible out-of-court settlement.


Hopes of a negotiated deal have lifted YUKOS's battered stock, but the company has still shed half of its value since before Khodorkovsky's arrest. It is now worth $24 billion.


Analysts say that rather than forcing YUKOS to the wall, the Kremlin wants to exert pressure to force it to sell off choice assets -- possibly to state-owned firms like Gazprom or oil company Rosneft.


That would effectively neutralize Khodorkovsky and his business empire well before Putin's second and final term ends in 2008, making it easier to plan an orderly succession. (Additional reporting by Mikhail Yenukov)

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