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)