Ex-Yukos boss defiant as trial ends, verdict set for April 27

"This is a fabricated affair," Khodorkovsky, 41, said in his closing statement. "The whole world knows that the Khodorkovsky affair, initiated by a criminal bureaucracy, has dealt a blow to Russia.

"The prosecution proved none of the charges against me. This is a farce. Even the prosecution witnesses testified in my favor," said Khodorkovsky as he stood for 40 minutes inside a metal cage in the courtroom to deliver his statement.

His friends and family, lawyers and a number of journalists present in the courtroom broke into applause after Khodorkovsky concluded his remarks.

The former head of Yukos, once Russia's wealthiest person and viewed here and abroad as a symbol of market-centered entrepreneurship, faces up to 10 years in prison and Judge Irina Kolesnikova said that a ruling on his case would be issued at 12:00 noon (0800 GMT) on April 27.

Khodorkovsky's co-defendent and former Yukos deputy, Platon Lebedev, was also present in the courtroom for the closing of the trial, but declined to make a closing statement.

The pair were indicted on seven counts of tax evasion and embezzlement.

Most of the alleged offenses related to acquisition of companies and commercial assets in the 1990s as they built the Yukos oil major after taking control of formerly state-owned enterprises in the chaotic privatization process that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union.

But some observers say the Kremlin initiated the case to punish the tycoon for financing opposition parties ahead of parliamentary elections in 2003 and for openly challenging President Vladimir Putin's policies, including the state's monopoly over oil pipelines.

Putin has on several occasions denied that the case against Khodorkovsky and his company was politically motivated, saying prosecutors were simply pursuing a tax cheat.

Observers and defense attorneys have predicted a guilty verdict in the trial, which began last June.

"The arguments of the lawyers have no importance for the outcome of the trial -- it is a political affair and the decision will be made at the highest levels," said Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center.

Khodorkovsky, whose personal fortune was once estimated at around 15 billion dollars, was arrested in October 2003 and has been held in preventive detention since then.

Throughout the trial, the prosecution has said that Khodorkovsky's company fraudulently acquired a 20-percent stake in a fertilizer plant, Apatit, in 1994, that Khodorkovsky has minimized his taxes using offshore companies and that he had organized a criminal gang.

The defense has argued that the Apatit case was above-board, that many of the laws that Khodorkovsky is accused of breaking have since been made legal and that none of the witnesses called could confirm the existence of the criminal gang.

The Yukos case has had wide repercussions in Russia and abroad.

One of Khodorkovsky's lawyers told the German daily Berliner Zeitung that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his government backed two German banks -- Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW) -- in assisting Moscow to dismantle Yukos.

"The German chancellor acted as a Kremlin accomplice in a case of theft committed by the Russian leadership," Robert Amsterdam said, according to comments printed in German.

A German government spokesman called the charges "absurd".

Putin, who was in Germany to promote Russian companies at the Hanover Fair, offered businessmen assurances, saying late Sunday that "all the speculation on possible preparations being made in Russia to review privatizations is without any basis."

However, the controversy appeared set to continue, with nerves shaken in the international business community in Moscow over the announcement by Russo-British oil firm TNK-BP on Monday that it now faces a demand for back taxes from 2001 amounting to 935 million dollars.

The Moscow stock market's RTS index fell more than three percent on the news.

(From AFP via Yahoo!, 4.11.2005)