Yukos Lawyers Say Prosecution Is Weak and Illegal

Lawyers for core shareholders in Russia’s troubled Yukos oil company said on Wednesday that evidence heard so far in their trial for fraud and tax evasion was weak and prosecutors had broken court rules, the Reuters news agency reports.

The case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev has come in tandem with massive tax demands which threaten to sink Yukos, Russia’s top oil producer. Analysts see the twin actions as Kremlin punishment for Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions.

After a month-long reading of documentary evidence, the court began hearing witnesses last week, starting with the head of Apatit, a fertilizer company at the heart of the accusations.

“The witnesses were supposed to prove that there was an embezzlement of Apatit shares but in fact they proved quite the opposite, so it doesn’t have the faintest whiff of criminality,” Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Yuri Shmidt told a news conference.

Yevgeny Baru, a lawyer for Lebedev, said his client’s high blood pressure was one of the main concerns. On one occasion the defense team even called an ambulance to the Moscow court room where their clients watch proceedings from behind bars. “It could end very sadly, possibly even fatally,” he said.

He also complained that Lebedev’s defense documents were repeatedly searched by prosecutors. “How can we talk about confidentiality of our relationship with clients in such a situation?”

The prosecution also broke court rules by presenting the judge with new documents after the investigation phase was over, said Konstantin Rivkin, another of Lebedev’s lawyers.

But he said the witnesses called so far had given the defense hope of eventually proving their client’s innocence. “If other witnesses are the same, then we will be looking to the future with great optimism.”

HERE