Evil Will Not Prevail

By Yelena Nikolashvili
Mikhail Khodorkovsky's daughter, Nastya, is interviewed by MN's Yelena Nikolashvili

Nastya Khodorkovskaya, the only daughter of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is 14. This year she finished the seventh grade at school. On Tuesday, May 31, while the Meshchansky Court judge was reading the last pages of the verdict for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Nastya was taking her last exam.



How did you learn what sentence had been delivered?

Tuesday afternoon, after we had already passed the English exam, my friend and I went out for a walk. We were already quite a long distance away from the school building when someone caught up with us and said: "Nastya, the deputy principal is looking for you." Well, we were frightened: Why should she be looking for me? We thought that there might have been something wrong with the exam although apparently it had passed smoothly. We dashed back to the school building. When I ran into the deputy principal's office, her TV set was on. She said: "Nastya, a verdict has just been delivered. Your father has been sentenced to nine years." At first I did not quite understand what that meant. I said: "What, it's been delivered already? I thought it will take a long time yet to read the verdict." Seeing my reaction, the deputy principal started diverting me with conversation, saying, "It's okay" and "we are with you."

I recovered about five minutes later. That is to say, I understood what had happened, but on the purely superficial level. It was not until the evening, when I returned home, that I began to realize, at last, what had happened. I just sat alone in my room, thinking. An hour later the fact that he had been convicted, that it was all over now, finally sank in.

Had you expected this sentence or were you hoping for a different verdict?

All this time I hoped that everything that had happened would prove to be just a bad dream and dad would be released. You see, this long ordeal has been so terrible that for some reason I had a feeling that at last something good must happen - just once during all these long months.

So at first I did not believe it when I heard about the nine-year sentence. This simply could not be true. Don't they have a conscience? I hoped that perhaps he would be given at least a short leave - just three or five days. I wanted to see him so badly. But then they did what they did. Now I feel just terrible.

What impression did he make on you when you last saw him? How did he behave?

I last saw dad when I was allowed into the courtroom during a break. Dad was sitting in a metal cage, smiling at me. Of course they did not let us talk. When it was time for me to leave, I managed to grab him by the hand for a second. The guard turned toward me with a deadly scowl on his face. But I was already out of the room.

What words spoken by your father do you remember most vividly - perhaps an episode from your childhood?

I constantly recall our last conversation. Every Sunday morning, when mom was still asleep, we would talk in the car as we drove somewhere - about how the week had passed, what was happening, and why. Dad explained many things to me. He was the one person who always told me the truth - what was really happening rather than what he would like to see. Today no one tells me that anymore. I am trying to look for the truth, but I can't find it anywhere.

So that last Sunday we went to his favorite computer store. Dad and I were sitting in the car, at a red light, and he was telling me about what was going on, about people, the way they behaved, and why.

He explained to me that all people must be able to work. And to be able to work they must study first. Many do not have an opportunity to study, but if they had, they could work and thus create new ideas and things. So all people must be given a chance to study, especially those who do not have such a chance now.

Had dad not established a boarding school (at Koralovo. - Ed.) the kids who are there now would have no chance of getting an education. But now they do, and he believes that everyone must be given such a chance. He said that if a person does not want to study, this person will not study all the same nor be able to work effectively, whatever his or her situation may be, whether he or she comes from a poor or well-to-do family. But if he really wants to study, he will go out of his way to get an education.

Were you scared when the attack on Yukos was launched? Did you and your father discuss the possibility of going abroad?

I absolutely cannot imagine living abroad. Once we discussed various educational options for me - in particular, studying abroad. But now I simply cannot imagine what will happen if I go away. I know for sure that this will be very bad.

Leaving may mean surrendering. As long as we are here, we can hold on, keep going, we still have strength. If I leave and mom has to spend much of her time visiting dad, while the junior kids grow up on their own, we will just fall apart. We will not be together. But right now being together is of paramount importance for us.

Of course, at the end of the day, everyone must count only on himself, but it would be wrong to put a full stop in the end of the phrase "everyone for himself." I believe that "one for all and all for one" is the right motto. People must help each other, stick together. This does not only apply to the family, but to the nation as a whole. Everything begins with little things, with the family. But it is abnormal when everyone has to survive on his own, living only for himself. Living separately would be very, very difficult for us.

What did the headmaster and teachers tell you when Federal Security Service (FSB) agents came to your school to make some strange check?

After that check, neither the headmaster nor the teachers that they had talked to said a word. In fact, I did not learn about it until later on, from a television news report. At the school, I did not hear a word on the subject from anyone. Although I thought at that time, "Now all hell is going to break loose." But everything remained just as it had been.

How are you doing at school? What are your most (least) favorite subjects?

I am doing okay. I've been at this school for three years now. I have good friends there. The teachers are also basically okay. We can talk with almost all of them on any subject, not only about studies. Well, of course there are some peevish, wicked creatures, but that's just how it is everywhere.

I am very happy to have passed my exams well, without any C grades. I wish I could tell dad. This year we've been "streamed" or tracked - put into different classes according to our abilities and preferences: mathematics, humanities, or general studies. I wanted to go to the math class although my literature teacher worked hard to persuade me to take a humanities course. But it is very difficult to dissuade me once I have made up my mind. So I took exams for the math class: algebra, geometry, exposition writing, and English.

We wrote an exposition about Janusz Korczak, who was trying to save destitute children from the Nazis. He taught them forgiveness so that they would not hate the Nazis for depriving them of their childhood. And the children forgave them.

In addition to recounting the text, we were also supposed to answer the question: "Why is it important to teach people forgiveness if there is so much evil around?" I wrote that evil does not exist without goodness and there is no goodness without evil. Being able to forgive is one side of goodness. If there is so much evil around, this is all the more reason to create goodness. So there must be people who can forgive: Otherwise evil will prevail.

How did your teachers and classmates react to your father's arrest?

The teachers were extremely sympathetic. And everyone was afraid to take up the subject with me. At first I did not understand, did not believe that this had really happened, and when I realized that it was real, I was unable to leave the classroom during the break. I looked like one huge rain cloud.

As soon as dad was jailed, I was advised not to go to school the following day - just in case. So I went back two days later. When I came, none of my classmates asked me any questions. They treated me with understanding. All of them turned out to be normal, decent people.

Everyone tried to support me - even those I did not really know. Kids would come up to me during the break, expressing sympathy, saying there was no one who would wish my dad to be convicted and that he would soon be released.

I watch television and hear some people come out against dad - presumably, public opinion is against him. But this is not what I see in real life. All people are okay really. I thought that some school children would be influenced by their parents and start treating me badly. But no, everyone is absolutely okay. They are sympathetic and extremely supportive.

How do you live with such a family name in the first place? How do people react when they first meet you?

As a rule, I do not give my family name when I see a person for the first time. This is because the family name immediately imposes an obligation upon me. I have never wanted to single myself out in any way. Distinguishing myself to myself is a different matter of course, but shouting from the rooftops that I am the daughter of the great Mikhail Khodorkovsky - no, this is terrible.

When I was transferred to this school, in Grade 5, I was very afraid that people would choose to make friends with me or, on the contrary, ignore me just because of my family name. At some point I even wondered whether I should change my surname: I was ready to do anything not to be singled out.

The amazing part is that no one said a word when I joined this school. That is to say, of course, some people were so surprised that their eyes almost started from their sockets, but no one made any reference to that. I developed a normal relationship with people at this school: I was in no more difficult position than other newcomers here. I was friendly with some and not so friendly with others, but it was always a normal relationship. I still cannot believe that I've been so lucky.

At first some kids did not know who my father was, but the teachers knew of course. But when this hullabaloo began, everyone was certainly in the picture. Yet there was nothing catastrophic about their reaction.

How much is an oligarch's daughter given in pocket money?

This I won't tell. I get enough.

What would you like your father to be when he is released? Would you like him to become the president or the head of government?

I have never thought about this. What is important is that he walks free, but exactly what he will be doing is not important at all. I am sure that when he is out, he will not be left without a job, without a business. He is a very intelligent person and he will find a place to work anyway. He will never lie around on a sofa at home. Of course he will be in charge. Dad will not be able to work for anyone. He will be in control, calling the shots: He is very clever.

What will you tell your father when he is set free?

I don't know. This doesn't matter really. I will simply talk to him one on one, without that glass, security guards or metal cage so that there is no one listening. I hoped so much that they would let him go before my exams so he could help me. Earlier, he always helped me with my exams. We always prepared together.

Recently I had a dream that he was set free. The day was gloomy and gray. I remember I was late somewhere. Someone asked me: "Why are you so late?" There were many people - acquaintances and strangers - standing around. Somewhere in the corner was dad. As soon as I saw him, I rushed to him. I was so happy, I was crying for joy - I even woke up with tears in my eyes. My first thought was: "Is it real?" Later, when I was finally awake and realized that it had been a dream, I started thinking: What if this dream means that he will be set free? What if they behave humanely? After all, he not only has a grown-up son but also little kids. Even I - okay, I am more or less on my own now, but the boys (6-year-old twins Gleb and Ilya. - Ed.), they have great difficulty understanding what is going on in this world. That is to say, they understand that he is in prison, but still keep asking what the reason is and when he will return home. And it is next to impossible to explain this to them.

I simply want us to be all together again. Right now we are of course together - mom, grand mom, granddad, myself, and the boys. We support each other, sharing our feelings. But there is something constantly lacking. I have never had this feeling before - of emptiness, hollowness.

From Moscow News, 06.2005

Khodorkovsky: I’ve Done My Duty, Now Do Yours

With the defense of jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky appealing his nine-year prison sentence in a case that has shaken observers in its implications for Russian democracy, the oil tycoon who has lost everything wrote his own appeal against a ruling that he says is based on conjecture and falsifications.

I consider that the verdict of the Meschansky Court should be revoked on the grounds described in the appeals filed by my attorneys, and I ask that this verdict be cancelled due to a lack of any guilt on my part in committing the crimes which I have been accused of.

As I appeal the verdict, I consider it of the utmost importance that the judicial powers as represented by the appeals courts let Kremlin officials and the rest of society know that no political request can serve as a basis for an unjust verdict that is grounded on an absurd interpretation of the law, on conjectures that have no foundation, and even on falsifications. This may not influence my own fate, which is being determined in other offices, but the lawless precedents established by the Yukos verdict must be destroyed before they themselves ultimately destroy the country’s system of law, Russia’s reputation, and the reputation of its justice system.

Speaking of falsely interpreting the law, I mean, for example, the fact that I was found guilty for not conforming to a court order to break a contract, which, as it is known, is not subject to any court procedures. Another example is the embezzlement ruling based on the completely unfounded conjectures of the prosecutors about a lack of profit at certain enterprises due to lowered production prices….

Unfortunately, we can go very far with such interpretations of the law. Speaking of absurd conclusions, I will point in particular to the fact that at the basis of practically the entire verdict lies the belief that people are completely controlled by managers and stock holders that are total strangers, only because these people at one point worked for them. A control that lasts for the rest of their lives. Even for the apologists of psychological war couldn’t have come up with such a simple method of establishing total dependence.

The fact that the law forbids building a sentence based on conjecture was also completely ignored. In particular, the whole verdict was based on completely uncorroborated assumptions that either I or Platon Lebedev issued certain orders to someone through certain people — something that cannot be found in any materials of the case, nor in witness testimonies. These are empty assumptions by the prosecution, and to base a sentence on them is judicially medieval, to say nothing of the lawlessness of such methods.

And, finally, about direct falsification: why was it necessary to distort the truth in the verdict, when talking of Lebedev’s credit card that simply does not exist among the materials of the case, to say nothing of the fact that it was simply impossible to see in the credit card documents any mention of a controlling firm? Why should the verdict falsely ascribe Lebedev’s signature to documents…that neither contain Lebedev’s signature, nor mention his name. And, finally, why should anyone make false statements about documents taken from a company computer if the protocol directly says that the documents were taken from an investigator’s computer that is connected to another computer that was not examined by anyone? After all, as a result of this documented machination, it is obvious that not only the information could have been changed, but it has been documented that it became longer by thousands of pages of text.

I do not want to mention other examples; there are more than enough in this document, which should shame the justice system.

I want to underline one more time: we are not talking so much about me and Platon Lebedev, but about the reputation of Russian justice, about the existence of a civilized system of law in our country in principle.

I have done my duty before my country: I have remained here and lost everything. Please do yours.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

(MosNews, 6.17.2005)

Kremlin and Russia Inc. realign after Yukos trial

By Timothy L. O'Brien and Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times

Even at the end of his trial, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was defiant.

After being handed a nine-year prison sentence for tax evasion and corporate fraud, Khodorkovsky, founder of the Russian oil company Yukos, vowed to appeal the verdict in Moscow. Brazenly jousting with his accusers, he also played to the Western sympathies that he had spent so much time and money cultivating.

"Despite the obvious lack of evidence for my guilt, and numerous witnesses having testified that I was not involved in committing any crime, the court has decided to send me to prison," he said in a statement. "I am aware that my verdict was decided in the Kremlin."

A shrewd billionaire who once was Russia's richest man and controlled an oil empire built through illicit billion-dollar deals and strong-arm tactics, Khodorkovsky also strained to invoke a Russian tradition of a moral cleansing through hardship.

"Even if I'm to spend years in prison, I still feel a great sense of relief," he said. "My fate now holds nothing extraneous, nothing inadvertent, no stains. The future looks bright to me, and the air of tomorrow's Russia seems pure."

Khodorkovsky began his career as an ax-wielding railroad payroll guard. He eventually snared lucrative state holdings in rigged privatizations and built a Western-style conglomerate before government agents arrested him in late 2003 aboard his private jet.

And now he has assumed the role of a political martyr whose authenticity is likely to be forged in a penal camp. But wherever his unusual journey ends, the economic cast of tomorrow's Russia has been shaped by his demise and that of his company, Yukos Oil.

"The central take-away from the Khodorkovsky affair is that the Russian state is taking control of the commanding heights of the Russian economy," said Clifford Kupchan, a research director at Eurasia Group, a consulting firm in Washington that specializes in geopolitical and economic analysis.

"After the tumultuous years of the Yeltsin regime, where hundreds of thousands of average Russians got ripped off, it's an expected political and economic outcome. That doesn't mean, however, that it's good for the economy."

But predicting the path of Russia's economy in the post-Khodorkovsky years is a cut above guesswork. Stephen Cohen, a Russian studies professor at New York University, likes to remind students of the Will Rogers maxim: "Russia is a country that, no matter what you say about it, it's true."

Clearly, the pell-mell and baldly inequitable land grabs that defined state privatizations in Boris Yeltsin's era in the 1990s have ended under President Vladimir Putin.

One reason that he halted them, in the view of many analysts, was the widespread distaste among average Russians - perhaps shared by Putin himself - for wealthy oligarchs like Khodorkovsky. Another may have been the country's seesawing economic fortunes in that decade.

China, whose strong state successfully oversees free-market initiatives, may have supplanted the United States as Russia's guiding economic light. And the Kremlin, as the downfalls of Yukos and Khodorkovsky illustrate, now defines Russia's energy sector as a state-controlled economic zone; foreigners and private companies seen as disloyal to the top need not apply.

While Khodorkovsky's incarceration has been widely interpreted as Putin's crackdown on a potential political rival, some Kremlinologists have also speculated that the entire episode may have been prompted by Yukos's effort to sell part of itself to Exxon Mobil and ChevronTexaco - transactions that the Kremlin may have seen as potential national security threats.

"I don't think Khodorkovsky's arrest had anything to do with politics," Cohen said. "It was about who had control of Russia's natural resources."

Yet even with no-trespassing signs planted around Russia's oil fields, other sectors, particularly the country's booming automobile and consumer goods markets, welcome outside involvement. Coca-Cola recently bought one of Russia's largest juice makers, Multon, which is based in St. Petersburg, in a $500 million joint venture - giving Coke a large stake in the Russian juice market.

"Our belief in Russia stems from the large educated population, huge natural resources and rapidly developing economy," said Grant Winterton, a senior Coke executive in the region. "It's one of our key growth markets for the company, and we are here for the long term."

Other foreign companies, including General Electric, Toyota and DaimlerChrysler, have also waded into Russia.

"We've come to the conclusion that Yukos is, more or less, a one-off for the Russian economy," said Blake Marshall, executive vice president of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, a trade group in Washington representing about 300 companies operating in Russia. "We're not likely to see something of this scale and of this gravity again."

The dismantling of Yukos, ostensibly to right the wrongs of sweetheart deals arranged by moguls like Khodorkovsky, also suggests that insider manipulation, bureaucratic shenanigans and perhaps outright corruption remain alive and well in Russia. In fact, an entirely new oligarchy may be in the making.

Rosneft, a state-owned oil giant, picked off Yukos's huge Siberian oil subsidiary through a shell company that initially won the unit in what analysts describe as a questionable auction nakedly orchestrated by the Kremlin. Rosneft's chairman is Igor Sechin, a senior Kremlin official and a high-ranking member of the siloviki, as those who once served in Russia's security and intelligence services are now known.

Marshall Goldman, associate director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, said Sechin and the siloviki recently flexed their economic muscles after Putin announced that Gazprom, the state-owned natural-gas giant, would merge with Rosneft. Sechin scuttled the deal, Goldman said, to preserve for himself the wealth and influence that Rosneft commands.

"What is fascinating is that Putin finds he is not the master of his own fate because he's a lame duck and because the siloviki have agendas of their own," Goldman said.

"What I think you'll see are people like Sechin emerging as the new oligarchs, and they are all going to make sure to fatten their pockets."

This month, Putin publicly criticized Anatole Chubais, head of Unified Energy Systems, over recent electricity blackouts in Moscow.

Putin has accused Chubais of managerial lapses at the electricity provider and has called for an investigation into Unified Energy's tax payments - the same kind of inquiry that ultimately ensnared Khodorkovsky.

Chubais is a faded luminary of the Yeltsin years and a widely disliked architect of some privatizations. If the Russian rumor mill is to be believed, the Kremlin has Chubais in its cross hairs.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Chubais, who recently survived an assassination attempt on a highway near Moscow, heaped praised on Putin and his leadership in an interview published on Friday in Moskovskiye Novosti, a newspaper.

Still, as is the case with most things Russian, not everyone agrees with this analysis of the current state of affairs - that is, an ascendant siloviki, a weakened president and Yeltsin-era oligarchs on the chopping block.

Financiers say Rosneft's proposed merger with Gazprom was not unwound by the siloviki but by Yukos lawyers, who blocked the transaction in American courts.

"It's complete nonsense to say the siloviki are making economic policy - their mandate is national security, and it's the liberals who are making economic policy," said William Browder, a veteran money manager in Moscow.

"Putin is trying to balance these two groups, and he remains the ultimate arbiter."

Timothy L. O'Brien reported from New York for this article and Steven Lee Myers from Moscow.

(International Herald Tribune, 6.14.2005)

Hundreds Rally in Central Moscow, Voice Support for Khodorkovsky

Russian liberals gathered in central Moscow Sunday to voice their support for the jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported.

Over 2,000 people took part in a rally in Lubyanka Square held under a slogan “I have forgotten what fear means”. Protesters voiced their support for the Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and all the other people jailed on politically motivated charges, the station reported.

Viktor Shenderovich, a popular satirist and one of the organizers of the rally, told Ekho: “Since early 1990s we have lived in a country without fear. It was our country and it was as though we had never imagined our future to be any different… We must stop being afraid. We have to understand that to be afraid is simply dangerous.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, were sentenced to nine years in prison each in late May, in a case their supporters said was politically motivated and aimed at stifling Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions.

(Moscow News, 6.12.2005)

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: "My living space from now on is the territory of freedom"

Despite the obvious lack of evidence of my guilt and a mass of evidence that I was not involved in any crimes whatsoever, the court has decided to send me to the camps.

I do not intend to harshly criticize the esteemed judge Irina Kolesnikova. I can imagine what sort of pressure she was under from the initiators of the “Khodorkovsky case” while she was preparing the verdict. Scores of government functionaries, or just plain self-interested intermediaries, were ready to bring any amount of money to the court just to make sure I was sent to Siberia.

When it comes right down to it, Kolesnikova is not the problem. The problem is that the judiciary in Russia has turned completely into a mindless appendage, a blunt weapon of the executive. Actually, not so much of the executive branch of power as of several economic groups with criminal ties. Millions of our fellow citizens have seen today that despite our country’s top leadership’s statement about the need to strengthen due process, there is nothing to pin our hopes on for now. This is a shame and a stain on our country, and its misfortune.

I do not admit guilt, and consider that my innocence has been proven. This is why I will appeal the sentence handed down to me today. For me, it is a fundamental matter of principle to attain truth and justice in my Motherland.

I know that the sentence in the criminal case against me was ultimately decided in the Kremlin. Some people in the president’s entourage insisted that only an acquittal could bring back society’s trust in the government, while others insisted that I be locked up for a long time, in order to deprive me of the will to live, to be free, and to fight.

I want to say thank you to the former, and bring to the attention of the latter that they have not won.

They will never be capable of understanding that freedom is an internal state of a person. It is precisely those who wish me ill, the ones who have dreams at night of a Khodorkovsky rabidly thirsting for vengeance, who are doomed to spend the rest of their lives trembling over the stolen assets of YUKOS.

It is they who are profoundly un-free and will never be free. It is their pitiful existence that is the true prison.

I, on the other hand, have the full right to say whatever I think and to act as I deem necessary, without needing to get my plans approved by any overseers. And this is why my living space from now on is the territory of freedom. The captives are those who remain slaves of the System, who have to grovel, to lie, and to debase others in order to preserve their incomes and their dubious status in this obscene society.

I will engage in civic activities; I plan to create several philanthropic organizations, for example a foundation to support Russian poetry and one for Russian philosophy, as well as a Union for Aid to Russian Prisoners. I remain an active participant in the programs of "Open Russia". I will soon be holding an extramural press conference at which I will discuss the highest-priority steps. This will be the first press conference from jail in post-Soviet history.

While I no longer have significant personal assets, there are many people willing to provide financial support for my programs because of their association with my name.

I want to say a big "thank you" to everybody who gathered here today inside and outside the courthouse, and to everybody who had supported my over the preceding year and a half. You are the decent and valiant people of Russia. I solemnly state that you can always count on me. Even though I don’t have big money any more, we can accomplish a great deal together.

I would like to say a separate word of thanks to those tens of thousands of ordinary inhabitants of Russia, from every corner of our country, who have supported me with their letters. My time in jail has shown me yet again that the Russian people are not mindless beasts of burden, as certain ideologists close to those in power assert. No, they are a righteous and noble people.

I will work together with those who want and are able to speak openly about our country, about our people, and about our common present and future. I will fight for freedom – for mine, for Platon Lebedev’s, for that of my other friends, and for that of all Russia. And particularly for that of the next generations, those to whom our country will belong in only a few years.

For them, my fate must become a lesson and an example.

Thank you to my family. They have been and remain my support, now and always. It may take many years, but I will walk out from the barbed wire and will return home. I have never been as sure of anything as I am of this.

Even though years in prison await me, I am still experiencing a great sense of relief. My life is now a clean slate; there is nothing extraneous, accidental, or superficial in it any more. I see my future as bright, and the air of tomorrow’s Russia as pure.

I have lost my place in the oligarchs’ clique. But I have gained a huge number of true and loyal friends.

I have regained a sense of my country. I am now together with my people – and now, we shall overcome together as well.

Do not despair. Truth always wins out – sooner or later.

(From Press Center for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 6.2.2005)

Wife of jailed Russian oligarch vows to stand by her man

The wife of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian billionaire oligarch, has vowed to continue visiting her husband in prison even if he is incarcerated in one of the country's far-flung gulags.

Inna Khodorkovsky, who sobbed in court last week as her husband was sentenced to nine years, faces the prospect of him being sent to one of the remote Soviet-era prison camps in far eastern Russia.

Inna Khodorkovsky will ‘shuttle there and back to see him’
Asked how she would cope if he were held thousands of miles from the family home in Moscow, Mrs Khodorkovsky said: "I will certainly go to his penal colony, take a look around. We'll shuttle there and back to see him more often."

Without her powerful husband by her side, she said, she has been forced to manage the family's affairs alone. Most of the people she thought she could rely on disappeared after Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003 and she has faced open hostility from Russian officialdom.

"When the people we considered friends vanished it came as a shock. Now I don't regret it or miss them. A new life has to be created with new people come to fill the gaps."

Bemoaning her treatment by the state, she added: "I discovered that our children had no residence certificates so I had to recover and file some documents. I obtained medical insurance papers for them. The women at the Housing Department complained a lot about me. They whispered among themselves, said nasty things and rejected my documents. But the people in the queue were always friendly - young and old people sympathised with me and helped me to fill out the forms."


Mikhail Khodorkovsky plans to appeal against his conviction.
While international attention has focused on the trial's wider political fallout, Russians have been engrossed in the personal drama of how his wife has coped with becoming a prison widow. Many resent the enormous wealth of the oligarchs, who became billionaires in the 1990s after gaining control of former state assets after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Khodorkovsky, the former head of the privatised oil company, Yukos, was convicted last week of tax evasion and fraud charges in what critics said was Kremlin-inspired revenge for his funding of opposition parties. He plans to appeal.

Since his arrest at an airport in Siberia, his wife's sole contact with him has been through the reinforced glass screens of the prison visiting room at the notoriously overcrowded Matrosskaya Tishina remand centre in Moscow.

Mrs Khodorkovsky, who has five-year-old twin boys, Gleb and Ilya, and a daughter, Nastya, 12, said that the younger children could not understand why they could not kiss or hug their father.

On their first visit, the twins tried to smash the screen with the telephone to help their father to escape. "They really could not understand that this talk through the glass on the phone was their meeting with their father," she said. She never took them back.

Her main concern is that Khodorkovsky's health will suffer under the prison regime. Jail conditions have improved little since Stalin's time, said Mrs Khodorkovsky, who takes food parcels to supplement his meagre diet.

"The [food] list has not changed since 1930," she said. "For example, cucumbers and tomatoes are not allowed in winter. Fennel and parsley are allowed but lettuce is not. For some reason, they did not allow bringing medicines for a year, and then permitted it."

In the remand centre Khodorkovsky has to share an airless cell with several men.

Naum Nim, the editor of a Russian prison magazine, believes that jails will compete to accommodate him if his appeal fails, hoping to curry favour on his release.

"Prison administrators are probably holding a contest to see who gets Khodorkovsky," Mr Nim told the Moscow Times. "They know he can pay for repairs and maybe even a new fitness room."

Some Russian jails are known as "black prisons" - run by mafia inmates, who are allowed a free hand as long as they keep order. Khodorkovsky, however, is likely to serve his sentence in a "red prison", where the inmates' every move is monitored.

He will be unable to conduct any business and would also struggle to get permission to write any memoirs of prison life. His best hope, advised Mr Nim, would be to bribe guards to give him his own cell, and to get a job in the prison library.

(From The Telegraph, 6.5.2005)

Nine Years Plus

The YUKOS Affair


Yesterday Moscow's Meshchansky Court sentenced Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to nine years each in prison. The third defendant, Andrey Krainov, received a five-year suspended sentence, as the prosecutor requested. “I know very well that the sentence in my criminal case was decided in the Kremlin,” Khodorkovsky, who never admitted his guilt, said after the court session. Lawyers called the court's decision a political reprisal. Meanwhile, the Prosecutor General's Office has already promised that it will soon bring new charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. If the court unconditionally sides with the prosecution in the new trial and rejects all of the defence's arguments, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev will obviously be isolated from society for much more than nine years.


In the aggregate and by partial addition of terms…

The final court session began with the reading out of evidence the court considered admissible or not. The court recalled that the defence had petitioned to have the results of seizures at Trust Bank and searches at Zhukovka declared inadmissible evidence. The court found the lawyers' arguments unfounded. This caused an indignant whisper in the room and even laughter, which drew a reprimand from Judge Irina Kolesnikova. Thus, the court found nearly all of the defence's arguments unfounded. This time, the judges read the verdict very quickly; they were obviously in a hurry, and it was clear that the end was near.

After a 20-minute break, the court proceeded to the main business. It noted that the defence's arguments for an amnesty for the accused unsound, as this was inapplicable to persons accused of several crimes at once. The court then mentioned that in Krainov's case, his first conviction and his role in exposing the crimes was taken into consideration. “All rise,” Kolesnikova said at last.

The court found Khodorkovsky and Lebedev guilty of two counts of fraud (Article 159 of the RF Criminal Code) for malicious failure to execute court orders that had entered into legal force (Article 315). In addition, both were found guilty under Article 160 (Embezzlement or misappropriation), and Article 165 (Causing large-scale material damage to property owners with no indication of theft). They were also found guilty of arranging especially large-scale tax evasion by organizations in the form of nonmonetary payments (Article 198) and tax evasion as private individuals (Article 198).

“In the aggregate and by partial addition of terms…Mikhail Khodorkovsky is sentenced to nine years in prison to be served at a medium-security security prison camp,” the judge pronounced. A buzz went around the rooms as the terms were named. Many were expecting lesser terms, although Prosecutor Shokhin had asked for ten-years prison terms. The court found Krainov guilty under Articles 315, 165, 159 of the Criminal Code and handed him a five-year suspended sentence, as the prosecution had requested. In addition, the court fully satisfied the Ministry of Taxation's claims against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, ordering the collection of a total of 17,395,449,000 rubles from them jointly (this figure consists of the tax arrears of four companies that were controlled by the accused and operated in the domestic offshore of Lesnoi, Sverdlov Region). The court did not satisfy the claims of Moscow Tax Inspectorates Nos. 1 and 5, but stated that it recognized their right to collect 15 million rubles from Lebedev and more than 62 million rubles from Khodorkovsky (as private individuals) by way of civil justice.

The court noted that the prison terms should be counted from the time of the defendants' actual detention. Recall that Lebedev was arrested on June 2, 2003, and Khodorkovsky, on October 25, 2003. Thus, if the sentence enters into legal force, both of them still have to serve slightly more than seven years. However, they could get a conditional early discharge after serving half of the term from the moment of detention.

I understand your crime

The accused listened to the sentence calmly. Even when the terms were read out, Khodorkovsky's expression didn't change. A slight ironic smile was frozen on Lebedev's face. “Do you understand the sentence?” Kolesnikova asked the three of them in turn. Krainov answered in the affirmative. Khodorkovsky said loudly to the entire room “I understand the sentence. I consider it only a monument to Basmanny justice.” Lebedev said he didn't understand the sentence, and Kolesnikov impassively reread the paragraphs incriminating Lebedev and the term set for him.

Finally, the court asked those present to be seated. Some of listeners left the room; the rest stayed – the judges still had to read the determination on the episode of the fraudulent acquisition of shares of Apatit. By now it was already clear that this case would be closed. Khodorkovsky's wife, Irina, who had been sitting there all day in dark glasses, began inconspicuously to wipe her eyes, while Khodorkovsky's mother, Marina Khodorkovskaia moved over to her, hugged her, and tried to calm her. Khodorkovsky also soothed his wife from behind the bars. The other relatives of the accused restrained themselves and hid their emotions.

Endurance also proved useful to the listeners for another three hours – the time the court spent after reading the sentence on a detailed interpretation of the episode with the Apatit shares. The court stated that the guilt of the three accused in this episode had been fully proven; however, given of the prosecutor's request to exempt the accused from punishment in this episode due to expiry of the statute of limitations, the court considered there were sufficient grounds for this. Thus, that part of the case involving fraudulent acquisition of the Apatit's shares was closed. After listening to the decision, Khodorkovsky said it was another monument to Basmanny justice; and when the judge asked Lebedev if he understood the court's determination, he answered “I understand your crime!”

With this pronouncement, the proceedings in the Meshchansky Court ended.

This is a shame, a disgrace, and a disaster for our country

“On behalf of all the lawyers, I declare that we strongly object to all parts of the sentence,” lawyer Genrikh Padva said on leaving the courtroom. “We will appeal it, although at the present time, there is little hope for our justice system.” Lawyer Karina Moskalenko added “This is a political reprisal against an independent businessman. We will have recourse to the European Court.” Lawyer Timofei Gridnev called the sentence “a harsh punishment that defies understanding”.

Meanwhile, the Prosecutor General's Office distributed a statement expressing satisfaction with the sentence. “We categorically deny any hidden political motive in this case,” said Natalia Vishniakova, the head of the department of information and public relations of the Prosecutor General's Office. “Specific, serious crimes have been committed, which have been proven. Enormous amounts of money were stolen. The state and its citizens have been shamelessly robbed.” Moreover, according to Vishniakova, it was still too early to call this the end of the YUKOS affair. New charges will be brought against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, first of all, charges of legalizing criminally acquired funds amounting to billions of rubles.

As if in reply to the statement from the Prosecutor General's Office, lawyer Anton Drel read a statement from Khodorkovsky to journalist. They evidently had time to draw up this document while the court was dealing with the Apatit shares. During these hours, Drel and his client were discussing something through the bars and looking papers.

“In spite of the obvious lack of proof of my guilt, the court has decided to send me to prison. I understand the pressure to which Judge Irina Kolesnikova was subjected. Today, millions of our fellow citizens have seen that, despite the announcements of our country's highest leaders that justice is being strengthened, there is no confidence in this. This is a shame, a disgrace, and a disaster for our country,” Khodorkovsky said. “I do not admit my guilt,” he emphasized. “And it is crucial for me to obtain justice in my homeland.” Khodorkovsky noted that “freedom is a person's internal state,” and said he considered himself truly free, unlike his enemies. “It is my enemies who dream at night of Khodorkovsky thirsting for revenge; they are doomed to spend the rest of their lives watching over YUKOS's stolen assets. It is they who are profoundly unfree, and they will never be free. Their pitiful existence is the real prison.” Khodorkovsky said he would continue to be involved in charitable activities and in the near future intended to hold a press conference in absentia from prison.

I lost my son the day they elected Putin

After listening to the lawyers' numerous statements, the journalists once more crowded around the entrance to the courthouse waiting for the relatives of the accused to appear – after more than half an hour, they had still not left the courthouse. Khodorkovsky's parents finally appeared on the front steps. Boris and Marina Khodorkovsky behaved with dignity. “I lost my son the day they elected Putin,” Marina Khodorkovskaia said. Boris Khodorkovsky thanked the journalists for “taking part in this court of law”. They were applauded as they left. The remaining relatives and friends of the accused never came out to the press; they left the courthouse through the service entrance. By six o'clock in the evening, the small square in front of the Meshchansky Court was empty.

The lawyers announced yesterday that they would appeal the nine-year sentence in the Moscow City Court. Then, if it was refused, the defence planned to apply to the supervisory authority of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Until the case is heard in the Cassation Chamber for criminal cases of the Moscow City Court, the Meshchansky Court sentence is not considered to have entered into force. But in order to file a full-scale appeal, the lawyers first need to obtain the minutes of all the court sessions (it could take several weeks to copy them). Then, a date will be set for considering the appeal. So, the Moscow City Court will obviously not take up the case until the end of summer. Of course, it is not inconceivable that all the minutes were prepared during the weeks the judges were reading the verdict. And if they are handed over to the lawyers in the next few days, the lawyers will file a full appeal within ten days after that. The defence is interested in having the Moscow City Court consider the appeal as soon as possible and having the sentence enter into force. Only after this can they turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Of course, the predictable decision of the European Court that the trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev was a violation of human rights is not binding in Russia, especially in the part concerning a repeal of the sentence.

(From Kommersant, 6.1.2005)