Hearing Postponed on Oil Tycoon's Appeal

A hearing Monday for jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's appeal of his tax evasion and fraud conviction was postponed a day amid wrangling over who would lead his defense.

The Moscow City Court had announced a postponement Sept. 14 after Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Genrikh Padva, failed to appear in court for health reasons. The prosecutor presented a letter, which it said was signed by Padva's doctor and informed the court that the lawyer would be unable to leave the hospital for at least a month.

Khodorkovsky has said his lawyers were not given enough time to prepare for the appeal of his conviction and nine-year prison sentence. His lawyers allege the hearings were speeded up to thwart his parliamentary bid in a December by-election for the University District of Moscow. Khodorkovsky sent his application to compete in the race last week.

"Everyone knows that registration for the University District elections opened today. The authorities have assigned the Moscow City Court the task of not allowing Khodorkovsky to register, and this explains everything," said Anton Drel, one of three defense lawyers who attended Monday's hearing, but election officials said they had not yet received his registration papers.

Once received, the election commission has five days to accept or reject the bid, said Ivan Starikov, a senior member of the liberal Union of Right Forces, who is heading Khodorkovsky's campaign staff.

The court ruled that the three should represent Khodorkovsky - in spite of his contention that none of them has a grasp of the entire case. The judge said Khodorkovsky had voiced no objections to their services.

But Khodorkovsky refused to allow the three to represent him.

"I did not agree to the participation of the lawyers ... and I refuse their services in the appeal process," Khodorkovsky said.

Each has studied only individual volumes of papers, he said.

"Normal people aren't capable of absorbing 400 volumes of case documents" in the limited time they've been provided, Khodorkovsky said.

He also challenged the prosecutor's information on Padva, saying he had been told the lawyer might be able to take part in the hearing within a few days. If not, he said, then he would agree to the services only of lawyer Yuri Schmidt.

Khodorkovsky told the court that he had been unable to meet with his lawyers since last week's hearing because a sick prisoner had been moved through three of the cells on his floor in Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina jail, and jail authorities had declared them under quarantine - a tactic Drel called "something out of the Middle Ages."

Khodorkovsky said he could not tell whether the quarantine was punishment for an interview he recently gave from inside prison.

He had been able only to sit in his cell and watch television, he told the court.

The prosecution of Khodorkovsky and the partial renationalization of Yukos, the oil company he founded, has been called a Kremlin drive to rid itself of the tycoon, who sponsored opposition parties in 2003 parliamentary elections. President Vladimir Putin, however, has cast the case as a justified probe into a corrupt businessman and his empire.

Associated Press via Forbes, 9.19.2005