Lawyers Vanish at Noon

// Empty seats appear beside Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Meshchansky Court


The Verdict


A scandal occurred on the third day of the Meshchansky Court's reading of the verdict against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Taking advantage of a 15-minute break, Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Genrikh Padva and Yury Shmidt, as well as Lebedev's lawyer, Vladimir Krasnov, left the court. Krasnov told journalists he had done this as a sign of protest, while Shmidt said he had never before encountered “such a shocking distortion of witnesses' testimonies by a court.”


The court continued reading the testimony of witnesses to the fraudulent acquisition from the state in 1995 of 44 percent of the shares of the Research Institute of Fertilizers and Insectofungicides, which owned two buildings on Leninsky Prospekt in Moscow. According to the verdict, in 1995, an organized group headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky set up a front company, AOZT Wollton, which won a tender for the state shareholdings in the research institute. Wollton committed to investing $25 million in the institute (Bank MENATEP guaranteed the deal). However, the court found that they had deceived the head of the institute, Petr Klassen. They explained to him that, having received money in 1995, the institute would have to pay taxes of 35 percent on it the following year and therefore, it would be best to return the investments to Wollton immediately, and the company would pay them for the institute next year. This was done. As a result, the directors of the institute signed an act of execution of financing investment commitments, which was approved ”without due verification” by then Chairman of the Russian Federal Property Fund (RFFI) Vladimir Sokolov. However, in the fall of 1997, the new management of the RFFI discovered that the investment commitments to the institute had not been fulfilled and annulled the deal with AOZT Wollton. But Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's group had dispersed the state shareholdings in the institute among several front companies without executing the court order

In particular, the court produced as proof of the defendants' guilt the court testimony of Sergey Usachev, listed in the documents as Wollton's general manager. The witness stated that, between 1994 and 1999, he had worked for MFO MENATEP, the bank of the same name, and at Rosprom and YUKOS, but had never been Wollton's general manager, and that all signatures beside his name on documents were forged. This was also confirmed by an expert examination conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office during the preliminary investigation and now authorized as a basis for incrimination.

Khodorkovsky listened to the testimony without any special attention, turning towards the auditorium and smiling tenderly at his wife. Lebedev at first followed the arguments of the verdict; but when the judge quoted from the testimony, he burst out laughing, clearly meaning that the witness's words had been grossly distorted. A minute later, he was absorbed in solving a crossword puzzle, only winking at his student daughter from time to time.

After two hours of reading, the court took a 15-minute break, during which lawyers Genrikh Padva, Yury Shmidt, and Vladimir Krasnov left the courthouse. Seeing the defence lawyers' empty benches after the break, presiding judge Irina Kolesnikova glanced indignantly around the room and ordered the secretary to write down the names of the missing lawyers. However, the judge could not take any measures against them, since the lawyers were only obliged to get her permission to leave during the trial, not during reading of the verdict. In any case, the law allows only one lawyer for each accused to be present at the verdict.

Meanwhile, the lawyers who had left the court didn't hide the fact that they had not left the courtroom because they were busy but because they vehemently disagreed with the contents of the verdict. “It's incomprehensible why we were needed at all,” they said somberly among themselves. Shmidt, who went out to the press, admitted that this was the first time in his 40-year career as a lawyer that he had encountered such a “gross distortion of witnesses' testimonies to please the prosecution.” He didn't give any specific examples, but promised to do this after the entire verdict had been read. Krasnov, who came out right behind him, also said he had left the court as a sign of protest against the verdict's groundlessness. In Krasov's words, he was worried about Lebedev's health most of all. “The other day, we delivered some medicine that has to be kept refrigerated to him in prison, and we don't know where it is now. Platon Leonidovich isn't feeling very well today.”

Kommersant will continue to follow the reading of the verdict.

(Kommersant, 05.19.2005)