Yukos Case Fuels Legal Fears

Interrogations, Arrests Spotlight Vulnerability of Defense Counsel
By GUY CHAZAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MOSCOW -- The Kremlin's assault on OAO Yukos has been widely viewed as an exceptional case, a result of the head-on collision between the oil giant's ambitious owner and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But legal experts say the measures taken by prosecutors and courts have exposed and exacerbated weaknesses that have long plagued Russia's judicial system -- in particular the vulnerability of defense lawyers representing enemies of the Kremlin.

In recent months, the arrests and interrogations of Yukos lawyers have fueled fears that those who defend politically unpopular clients could themselves become targets. Two senior Yukos legal officers fled Russia this fall to escape criminal prosecution, while a lower-ranking colleague who stayed, Svetlana Bakhmina, was arrested last month. Another Yukos legal consultant, Elena Agranovskaya, was detained a day later. Prosecutors also have launched sweeping searches and interrogations of other Yukos lawyers and middle managers.

"The Yukos case is part of the general picture," says Andrei Borovkov, a prominent trial lawyer.

Russian attorneys have long complained that the court system here puts them at a disadvantage compared with prosecutors. A lawyer can be denied access to his client, especially in an investigation's early stages, and often isn't present if the client confesses; judges routinely turn down defense requests to exclude evidence obtained illegally. The bias also is reflected in the small number of acquittals handed down by Russian courts, Mr. Borovkov says.

More worrying still is the tendency of prosecutors to call in lawyers for questioning on cases they are working on -- a move that is forbidden under Russian law. "It's absolutely unacceptable to question lawyers as witnesses in their clients' cases," says Genri Reznik, head of the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers. "It's a clear violation of an attorney's rights." While attorneys can't be coerced into providing information, the prospect of arrest is so intimidating that they often comply with the summons for questioning.

Last year, Igor Trunov, who represented families of victims of the October 2002 Moscow theater attack by Chechen gunmen, was summoned by prosecutors.
He went, but refused to answer questions. Mr. Borovkov says he himself received a summons in 2001 while defending a top executive of Russian airline OAO Aeroflot who was accused of embezzlement. The manager was a close friend of fallen tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a fierce opponent of Mr. Putin who now lives in self-imposed exile in Britain. Mr. Borovkov ignored the summons.

Even so, lawyers say the pressure brought to bear on lawyers in the Yukos case is unprecedented.

"Even in Soviet times, you never had lawyers being imprisoned for allegedly aiding and abetting criminals," says Karina Moskalenko, a defense attorney for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Yukos founder who is on trial for fraud and tax evasion. "They're trying to intimidate lawyers, so they don't defend people the authorities don't like."

Ms. Bakhmina, deputy head of Yukos's legal department, was arrested Dec. 7 on charges of membership in an "organized group" that stole property worth 18 billion rubles ($648 million) from Yukos subsidiary Tomskneft.

Her detention sowed panic among company employees. "If they can arrest her, they can arrest anyone," says one manager. "She never had anything to do with the big deals and strategic decisions." Legal observers say that in jail, Ms. Bakhmina is more vulnerable to pressure to testify against Yukos executives in breach of attorney-client privilege.

The day after Ms. Bakhmina was arrested, Yukos legal consultant Elena Agranovskaya was detained on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
She was released 10 days later. Ms. Bakhmina has been remanded in custody until Feb. 7. Meanwhile, arrest warrants have been issued for two other senior Yukos lawyers, Dmitry Gololobov and Kirill Glukhovskoi, who both have fled abroad. All four of the accused say they are innocent.

Yukos lawyers have complained of official pressure since the early days of the case. In October 2003, just before Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest, armed guards searched the offices of his lawyer, Anton Drel, seizing his computer and cellphone and cracking open his file cabinets. A month later, guards seized a document from another Khodorkovsky counsel, Olga Artyukhova, after she visited him in jail.

But the detention of Ms. Bakhmina represents an escalation. Like attorneys anywhere in the world, lawyers in Russia don't have immunity from criminal prosecution. But, Mr. Reznik says, it is unusual to lock up suspects in a white-collar crime. "It violates the presumption of innocence," he says.

Yukos described the latest arrests as part of a campaign of "total persecution" of the company's staff, designed to "paralyze" Yukos and deprive it of legal protection from the "forcible expropriation" of its assets. In a rare riposte, Russia's Prosecutor General's office said all those implicated in the Yukos affair were guilty of "dirty theft."

"The law was trampled on over a long time, crudely and cynically," the office said in a statement. "The time has come to reap what they have sown."

(The Wall Street Journal, 1.3.2005)