Khodorkovsky, Lebedev Will Face New Charges Soon — Prosecutors

Russia’s prosecutors are set to file new charges against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his ally Platon Lebedev shortly, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office said Friday.

“In the near future the new charges are to be brought against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, relating, first and foremost, to the legalization of illegally derived incomes to the tune of billions of rubles,” Natalia Vishnyakova, spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, was quoted by the RIA-Novosti news agency as saying.

Earlier, Russian media wrote that Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev could face new charges in the near future. Sources close to the investigation said that several top executives and shareholders of the Yukos oil company had misappropriated assets entrusted to them to the value of $11 billion by selling oil produced by Yukos’ production units to intermediaries.

In April Russia’s Izvestia newspaper wrote that the prosecutors were set to prove that a scheme of selling oil via offshore firms — widely practiced by Russian companies — was criminal by nature and could be qualified as misappropriation.

The Prosecutor General’s Office launched new criminal proceedings against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partners in October 2004. Khodorkovsky, Vasily Shakhnovsky, Mikhail Brudno, Mikhal Yefremov, Antonio Valdes Garcia, Vladimir Pereverzin and Andrei Leonovich were charged with misappropriation and money laundering.

By that time Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had already been detained and charged with tax evasion and fraud. In mid-May a Moscow court is due to pronounce its verdict in their case.

Prosecutors believe that in the years 2002-2003 “an organized criminal group” headed by Khodorkovsky “misappropriated the property entrusted to them and legalized cash and assets”. According to investigators, the group had devised a scheme for stealing profits made by Yukos’ oil producing units — Yuganskneftegaz, Tomskneft, and Samaraneftegaz.

To that end a chain of intermediary firms was established. Prosecutors believe that such practices resulted in the loss of at least $11 billion in profit made by Yukos’ subsidiaries.

The lion’s share of the profits received by the offshore firms was paid out in the form of dividends to their founders — top Yukos executives and shareholders. Prosecutors believe that such actions amount to money laundering. In March of this year the Prosecutor General’s Office wrote to Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz suggesting that they recover the profits they failed to receive from Yukos.

Earlier Yuganskneftegaz, a key Yukos asset auctioned off by the government in December and taken over by the state-owned oil firm Rosneft, sued Yukos at the Moscow Arbitration Court for 163 billion rubles. Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz did not follow its example.

Defense lawyers for Lebedev and Khodorkovsky told Izvestia they did not rule out that their clients could face new charges shortly.

(From Mosnews, 5.13.2005)