Prosecutors begin detailed listing of charges against Yukos tycoon

Prosecutors began to lay out in detail their case against Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky as supporters held a rally demanding that detention conditions of his co-defendant be improved.

Khodorkovsky is standing trial with his top associate Platon Lebedev on seven counts of fraud and tax evasion. The men, who have been jailed since their arrests last year, face 10 years in jail if convicted.

Following opening statements last week, Prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin began to lay out in detail the case against Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, and Lebedev, who like the tycoon is one of the main shareholders in the Yukos oil giant.

According to Shokhin, governors of several regions in central Russia had asked prosecutors to investigate what they said was an unlawful purchase by Khodorkovsky and his associates of the government's 20-percent stake in the Apatit fertilizer plant during Russia's controversial privatizations of the mid 1990s.

The governors claimed that following the purchase, Apatit, which dominates fertilizer production in their regions, hiked prices on "phosphates, making them unreachable for (local) agriculture producers," Shokhin said.

The governors also complained that Apatit "used criminal tax evasion schemes" and asked the prosecutors to reexamine a "peace agreement" between the federal property fund and a company that eventually came to own the 20-percent stake in Apatit.

The agreement should be annuled, the governors argued, because the value of the stake was deflated, Shokhin said.

Meanwhile a dozen Lebedev supporters staged a protest in front of the justice ministry, demanding that detention conditions for him be improved.

"Refusal of medical aid is a death sentence," read the signs carried by the protestors.

Lebedev's attorneys had repeatedly asked the court to let their client be examined by independent doctors, requests that have been denied by the judge.

According to a diagnosis by a British doctor made on the basis of Lebedev's medical charts, the 47-year-old is suffering from a serious liver illness and could be in the initial stages of liver cancer.

The arrest of Khodorkovsky last October and the troubles of his company are widely seen as payback by the Kremlin for the tycoon's political ambitions and open defiance of President Vladimir Putin.

Khodorkovsky had funded opposition parties ahead of last year's parliamentary elections and had publicly criticized the government of Putin, a former KGB agent.

Authorities have denied the charge, saying they are simply fighting corruption. Khodorkovsky's defenders say that similar charges could be filed against most of Russia's top businessmen as they all made their fortunes in the controversial privatizations that followed the Soviet Union's collapse.

Yukos, Russia's largest oil producer, has also been targeted by the authorities. On Tuesday, Russian authorities said they intended to sell Yukos's largest production subsidiary, Yukanskneftegaz, thereby stripping the oil giant of its crown jewel.



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