Krasnokamensk Penal Colony Administration Hinders Work of Defense Lawyers

Albert Mkrtychev, Denis Dyatlev, Elena Levina and Irina Khrunova, four of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s defense lawyers, last week visited penal colony FGU IK 10 in the town of Krasnokamensk to meet with their client and provide him with legal assistance.

However the colony administration’s attitude towards the lawyers has changed dramatically since their last visit to the colony two weeks ago. The penal colony administration had earlier abided by the law with regard to the procedures for meetings of lawyers and their client. This time, the colony administration imposed procedures that were aimed at infringing upon the rights of the lawyers and the client, as well as impeding the court appeal on specific violations.

After setting up an additional checkpoint over a hundred meters away from the entrance to the colony, the lawyers were not able to record the fact and time of their arrival. They were then kept waiting in the cold because the colony administration had not “noticed” their presence.

The colony administration allowed the lawyers to see their client strictly one at a time despite the fact that there is no law prohibiting visits to the client by the defense attorney team as a whole. This means that from the outset Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s rights were violated since he was unable to have an exchange of views with his attorneys on the case and thus develop a joint position in discussion with them. Furthermore, the lawyers were unable to confirm unlawful behavior by prison officials in any way including witness testimony by fellow prison employees.

Before the meeting with their client, the lawyers faced a preliminary series of questions during which time they were asked to answer question on how long the visit to their client would last (although by law they are allowed to have one four-hour discussion per day). In addition, the visit of one of the attorneys was abruptly ended with no reason given. During their stay in Krasnokamensk (a total of three days), all the lawyers communicated with their client for about five hours altogether.

Before and after meeting with Khodorkovsky, every lawyer, in violation of legal requirements, was subjected to a so-called “personal search” procedure. This was in fact a body search during which some of the lawyers had to hand over their clothes, belts and shoes, while the others had to hand over items of their underwear for this “personal search.” This so-called “personal search” was held without any witnesses being present; in the course of the search, colony representatives in violation of the law refused to give any reasons for it or to record the fact that the search was undertaken or record any findings.

In violation of Article 8 of the law on Advocacy and the bar in the Russian Federation and Article 6 of Code of professional ethics for lawyers, administration officials at the entrance to and exit from the colony’s territory repeatedly tried to examine the defense team’s confidential materials, including lawyers’ records on their client’s case, thereby compromising the lawyers’ professional confidentiality. Moreover, the personal papers and documents of lawyer Albert Mkrtychev were seized when he left the territory of the colony. Colony officials had already examined these documents when he entered the restricted area and nothing caused them to issue any warnings at that point.

The colony administration and staff paid special attention to confidential notes including the lawyers’ private notes made by them during their talk with Mikhail Khodorkovsky. According to the colony’s administration, officials have the right to look through the notes “for the purpose of preventing terrorist attacks”. And following the thorough examination and attempts to decode the transcripts made by Elena Levina, the colony administrator requested that the lawyers give a written promise that they would agree “to speak and write only in Russian”.

The lawyers were also given to understand unambiguously that non-compliance with any of the unlawful demands by the colony administration would result in making it impossible to communicate with their client for “objective” reasons.

The defense lawyers are conscious of the need to continue to provide Mikhail Khodorkovsky with legal assistance. However, in their opinion and in the opinion of their colleagues in Russia and abroad this situation is absolutely unprecedented.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Press Center, 11.22.2005

Rosneft hires YUKOS ex-spokesman as IPO adviser

MOSCOW, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Russian state oil firm Rosneft has hired former YUKOS spokesman Hugo Erikssen to advise on plans for an initial public offering, his consultancy Mmd said on Monday.
Erikssen headed YUKOS's international public relations team from 1999 until 2004, when bailiffs seized its core production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, in lieu of unpaid back taxes and sold it to Rosneft.

Mmd said in a statement it had been appointed by Rosneft as global coordinator of public relations, public affairs and investor relations, with Erikssen taking responsibility for the Rosneft account.

Erikssen joins a number of senior YUKOS managers to jump ship to Rosneft, including Sergei Kudryashov, who used to run Yuganskneftegaz, and Alexander Sapronov, YUKOS's former head of logistics.

YUKOS fell victim to what many analysts believe was a Kremlin drive to destroy its ambitious chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky and restore state control over strategic energy resources.

Khodorkovsky was convicted in May of fraud and tax evasion and has begun an eight-year sentence in a Siberian penal colony.

Yahoo! News, 11.14.2005

Khodorkovsky Sets Out Vision for 2020

By Catherine Belton
Staff Writer
Mikhail Khodorkovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin's regime in a withering missive from his east Siberian prison camp that said time was up for the "parasitic" policies of the current elite and, for the first time, presented what appeared to be his own manifesto for the presidency.

In his first major article since he was sent to serve out his sentence in the remote Chita region near the Chinese border, Khodorkovsky called for Putin to step down "not a day before nor an hour later" than the legal end of his term in 2008. He called for a "new responsible elite" to run the country in place of the bureaucrats who he said currently sought office only for the opportunity to win assets. Without a major shift toward more paternalistic, left-wing economic policies, the country is heading toward collapse, he said.

"This parasitic approach no longer works," he wrote in the article, which took up a full page in Kommersant on Friday. "The country is not capable of being competitive, and the strategic reserve of endurance and infrastructure built up from the Soviet era has run out."

Attempts by the Kremlin to justify its authoritarian rule by encouraging extremist groups would lead to "sorry" consequences and long-term instability, he said.

The photo that accompanied the article, showing Khodorkovsky dressed in a black prison uniform with his head shaved, bent over a wooden desk as he wrote in an exercise book, was a stark reminder of the former oil tycoon's rapid fall from power. But the article, titled "Left Turn-2," appeared to be a clear bid for a place in the political sun and his strongest personal challenge yet to Putin's regime.

Picking up from his last newspaper article, in which he called a "left turn" the only way to avoid a major sociopolitical backlash, Khodorkovsky set out a 12-year economic plan that called for nearly $1 trillion in investments from the state and private sector to be plowed into improvements in infrastructure, education and science.

Under the subheading "Program 2020," he called for the return of elections for regional governors and for the first time openly called for the creation of a parliamentary republic -- a goal he was believed to be pursuing before his arrest in October 2003.

Some have seen the legal attack against Khodorkovsky as a campaign to crush his political ambitions, but the Kremlin has portrayed the fraud and tax evasion case as a just battle against a robber baron.

In contrast to the rebellious Decembrist officers whom Tsar Nicholas I sent into exile and political isolation in Chita in 1825, Khodorkovsky's supporters hope he may yet be able to influence the country's political discourse.

"He might be far away near the uranium mines, but in this modern age it will be much harder to cut him off," said Irina Khakamada, a liberal politician and former presidential candidate who backed Khodorkovsky's abortive bid for a State Duma seat in September.

While Khodorkovsky's calls for a large increase in state spending appeared populist, his political analysis was spot on, Khakamada said, adding that she agreed with those who thought his harsh prison sentence could enhance his political standing.

Underlining that he believed his managerial skills were superior to Putin's, Khodorkovsky said talk of a "personnel crisis" in government needed debunking. He said the current system, which is based on unquestioning loyalty to the president, was the source of the crisis. "I have experience in building the strongest Russian corporation: Yukos," he said. "And if this company grew from a condition of post-Soviet collapse to reach the level of a world giant with a capitalization of $40 billion, then this was mainly due to personnel policy.

"If we, like the Kremlin does today, relied on job seekers' ability to look loyally into their boss' eyes and carry his briefcase, then Yukos would not have existed for long," he said.

"Drawing up the correct criteria for selecting top personnel is vital. ... The Kremlin chooses people according to a federal criterion of 100 percent loyalty and pliancy. A capable person cannot be 100 percent pliable -- that is a fate reserved for those who are without talent and are motivated only by money."

Painting a dire picture of the country's infrastructure, he said the Kremlin's policies had caused it to lose control over the North Caucasus, and said the military was in a state of collapse. He compared the situation in the Kremlin to a famous Brezhnev-era joke that told of apparatchiks shaking their leader's windowless, rusty train car on the spot in an effort to convince him that it was moving.

While Putin has sought to avoid the inflationary effects of ramping up state spending, Khodorkovsky proposed using the state's windfall from high oil prices to boost economic growth and living standards. He called for investments of $50 billion to rebuild the armed forces, and said $10 billion in financial incentives for families to have more children could raise the population to between 220 million and 230 million.

He also proposed levying a windfall tax on businessmen who, like himself, won their enterprises in the controversial privatizations of the 1990s. Likening the tax to one imposed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, he said it would legitimize businesses' holdings and calculated that it could raise $30 billion to $35 billion in three to four years.

The Moscow Times, 11.14.2005

Oligarch plots political revenge from jail - Sunday Times - Times Online

Mark Franchetti, Moscow



THE former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was arrested after declaring his opposition to President Vladimir Putin, will launch a career in politics when he is released at the end of his eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, his wife has revealed.
Inna Khodorkovskaya said that far from being shattered by his incarceration in a remote Siberian prison colony, he is determined to dedicate his life to securing political reform.



“Of course he’ll do politics when he comes out,” said Khodorkovskaya in her first interview with a western newspaper. “That’s the way he is. He wants to change this society, that’s for sure. And just by being there in jail, with his presence alone, he is already changing it. You’ll see.

“He is not broken. On the contrary he’s even stronger. He is very focused and is in it for the long haul. Support for him is growing and will continue to grow as people understand that he is different from other so-called oligarchs. People in Russia are starting to wake up.”

Her comments coincided with a 12-year plan to modernise Russia that her husband unveiled last Friday in the opposition paper Kommersant. It calls for measures to curb corruption and create a “paternalistic” government that would aim to treble gross domestic product, boost the population by nearly 80m and create new armed forces.

In full-page newspaper advertisements the previous week, Khodorkovsky demanded a new breed of officials, “those interested in the fate of the country and its people, not their own unbridled personal enrichment”. “The country needs a new political elite — heroes, not mediocrity,” he added.

Khodorkovskaya, 36, spoke out after seeing her 42-year-old husband for the first time in the prison colony where he is expected to remain until 2011.

After his arrest in 2003 Khodorkovsky, who built a personal fortune of £4.5 billion, was held in an overcrowded Moscow jail for two years.

In a campaign orchestrated by the Kremlin, he was stripped of Yukos, his oil company, and much of his fortune.

Last month he was sent more than 3,000 miles east of Moscow by train to penal colony YaG 14/10, in Krasnokamensk, a uranium-polluted area of Siberia. For 10 days his wife and children had no idea where he was.

“I read in the press that he had been sent as far away as possible but I hoped it wasn’t true,” said Khodorkovskaya, who once worked for her him as an accountant.

“My heart was racing when I received the letter from the prison authorities stating where he was. Until the very end I hoped the papers were wrong and that he’d been sent closer to home. They dispatched him so far away because they want to isolate him. They want people to forget about him.”

A few days later she set off on her own arduous journey to Krasnokamensk — six hours by plane and 10 hours by car across Siberia’s desolate steppes. The colony, where more than 1,000 inmates are serving sentences for theft and fraud, opened in the 1960s when prisoners were used to build one of the Soviet Union’s largest uranium processing plants.

The area is heavily contaminated with radioactive waste. and in winter the temperatures drop to -40C. The summers are stiflingly hot and the colony becomes infested with mosquitoes. Tuberculosis is rife.

Khodorkovsky, who lived in a luxurious Moscow villa and travelled by limousine and private jet, now sleeps in a bunk bed in one of 13 army-style barracks and shares his dormitory with about 100 other men.

He is woken at 6am and puts on a black uniform bearing his surname, initials and the number 8, to identify his barrack. Number 8 is said to house the colony’s blatniye, or bandits, its most powerful inmates.
During Khodorkovsky’s detention in Moscow his wife was allowed to visit him only once a month for 45 minutes. They talked by telephone through a thick partition of glass and metallic netting.



Visiting rules are more relaxed at the colony. Like the other inmates, Khodorkovsky is allowed four three-day visits a year and six visits of three hours each. For the longer visits the prisoners and their families are locked in a rundown Soviet-era building where they have a room measuring 9ft by 9ft and access to a small communal bathroom and kitchen. Khodorkovskaya used this to cook a pan of fried potatoes, one of her husband’s favourite dishes.

“It’s difficult to find the words to explain what it felt like to be with him for the first time after so long. It filled me with new energy and strength to face the future,” said Khodorkovskaya, who arrived at the colony carrying a bag full of fresh vegetables, boiled meat, clothes and Russian music CDs from the tycoon’s collection.

“He’s changed a lot but I recognised the man I knew before his arrest,” she added. “He has become even more determined. He is very calm and far more philosophical about life. Before he was always focused on his work. Now he believes that the family is what matters most.

“He is not consumed by anger. Instead he is a man with a clear vision. He is feeling combative.”

Khodorkovskaya, who is shy of publicity, said that her husband had joked about the fact that he will be made to sew mittens. As the only graduate there he will also give classes in business and science.

He has subscribed to half a dozen newspapers and asked for several books, ranging from theological and academic texts to novels, including Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

The couple have a 14-year-old daughter Natasha and six-year-old twin boys Ilya and Gleb. Khodorkovsky probably will not see them again until he is freed as he and his wife believe that the trip would be too traumatic for them. Instead, he has opted to exchange the shorter family visits for telephone calls to his children.

“He has no regrets. Nor do I,” said Khodorkovskaya. “Neither of us would have wanted to flee abroad. Russia is our country. They will never break him. He is a man who is going places.”


Sunday Times - Times Online, 11.14.2005

____________________
How many times I'll have to say that there was no private jet and luxurious villa...

A Renegade Looks Beyond Siberia

Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is up for parole in '07, but his release is unlikely with Putin in power


"I have been in the land of the Decembrists, political prisoners subjected to hard labor and uranium mines," declared Russia's best-known prisoner, drawing a parallel between himself and famous Russian dissidents of the past. In full-page advertisements in major Western newspapers on Nov. 2, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now serving an eight-year sentence at the remote Krasnokamensk Penal Colony in Siberia, sketched a vision for "Russia's development for the 21st century," including "a new political elite" willing to "say 'no' to the repressive machinery of a criminal bureaucracy."

A political manifesto? Or a desperate bid for survival? Possibly both. Three of Khodorkovsky's former business associates, who underwrote the advertisements, say concern for his safety is the main motive for the publicity. "There is a conspiracy not only to isolate him but also to kill him," claimed Leonid Nevzlin, a former partner at a recent press conference in Tel Aviv, where he fled after a Russian warrant was issued for his arrest in 2004. Conditions in Russian prisons can be dangerous, and Khodorkovsky's backers fear a nearby uranium mine may have released radiation, though the authorities deny it.

Principles Over Profit
Whether or not the former chairman of oil giant Yukos is genuinely fearful for his life, his lawyers vow to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. They will argue that he is a political prisoner and didn't get a fair trial. At the same time it looks as if Khodorkovsky, who was convicted of tax evasion and fraud after financing opposition political parties two years ago, still has political ambitions. Long-standing Moscow rumor has it that Khodorkovsky could have avoided prison and stayed in business had he been willing to cut a deal and flee the country. He even has a business to run. Group Menatep, the holding company he and his partners created, has assets abroad -- including GTS Central Europe, which owns telecom service providers in the region, and a 26% stake in Modgal Industries Ltd., which controls a leading Israeli petrochemicals producer. But last January, Khodorkovsky handed his 60% stake in Menatep to Nevzlin. "Prison will rescue Khodorkovsky from his oligarchic image and turn him into a politician of the new generation," says Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst linked to the left-wing opposition.

Behind bars, Khodorkovsky has been active politically. In September he ran for parliament but was disqualified after a court upheld his conviction. Supporters say he's working on a political program to be published soon. "His voice will ring like a bell in the political desert created by the present authorities," says Ivan Starikov, a leader of the opposition Union of Right Forces who managed Khodorkovsky's parliamentary campaign.

Yet if he is serious about a political career, he must overcome the hostility of the Russian public. In his statements, he has been leaning to the left, denouncing poverty and social injustice as well as authoritarianism. He has called for "a broad social-democratic coalition" including Communists and right-wing pro-market groups. But so far, few ordinary Russians seem impressed. An October opinion poll by Moscow's independent Levada Center found that only 18% of Russians sympathize with Khodorkovsky -- and 67% don't. "As a so-called oligarch, such a figure is disliked by most of the population," says Levada analyst Boris Dubin. Perhaps sympathy for Khodorkovsky will grow the longer he languishes in Siberia. His sentence ends in 2011. But while he's eligible for parole in 2007, his team isn't optimistic. "I fear that as long as Putin and the people around him are in the Kremlin, there's no chance of Khodorkovsky being released," says his lawyer, Yuri Schmidt.

Even after 2008, when President Vladimir V. Putin is due to retire, most analysts believe Putin will remain a key political figure, with close allies still controlling the Kremlin. "The Kremlin wants to decide who the political leaders will be, and this restricts the democratic process," says Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident who is now an Israeli politician. That doesn't augur well for Khodorkovsky's political aspirations. Still, his supporters hope that public opinion will one day turn against the Kremlin, either because of economic problems or because voters become fed up with authoritarian methods of rule. The former tycoon can't run for office from prison, but he's only 42 years old, and Russian politics are always unpredictable. Three years ago few would have guessed that the country's richest man would now be sewing mailbags in a Siberian jail cell.

Business Week, 11.14.2005

Kommersant: Mikhail Khodorkovsky Writes Program 2020

Prisoner YaG 14/10, former owner of YUKOS Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has shown that he intends to continue his political activity in prison. He has given Kommersant an article outlining a concept for the modernization of Russia. “The left turn,” he says, entails combining democratic methods of government with state paternalism.
Some of the theses of Khodorkovsky’s program and the characterization of the political situation in Russia were also included in an interview published yesterday in the French Politique Internationale. Khodorkovsky severely criticizes the “Putin system” in which “absolutely everything, from the railroad police to the days off in the prisons, depends on the tastes, moods and whims of one man.” Khodorkovsky is no less decisively critical of the opposition, which, in his opinion, is in a deep crisis. “The causes of this crisis are that today the opposition parties are headed not by statesmen but by people whom I would call businessmen from politics,” he said. They is not striving for power but only to “trade political claims” for the “goodwill of the Kremlin.”

The real opposition, Khodorkovsky says, will first form “on the left flank.” But only a coalition is capable to taking over per from the present authorities, headed by politicians, “liberals in the economic plan and socially left.” They will meet the hopes of the active part of Russian society. “Those hopes are expressed simultaneously in the desire for more social justice and a real market economy,” the former oligarch explained.

In the article by Khodorkovsky published today in Kommersant, Khodorkovsky outlines his plans for the modernization of Russia by 2020 and the legitimization of the privatization of property in the 1990s.

by Andrey Kochetov
______________________
LINK TO Mikhail Khodorkovsky's article on the MBKh Society Site

Kommersant 11.11.2005

Krasnokamensk in 2001

On the Road to Russia's Rich Wasteland
A Uranium Mine's Mother Lode of RealityAugust 8, 2001
By Robert G. Kaiser, The Washington Post
Reprinted with permission from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post.

KRASNOKAMENSK, Russia (Aug. 2) – Look down into the enormous hole and play a mind game: From this giant excavation into the rolling Mongolian steppe, less than 25 miles from the spot where the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian borders intersect, came the uranium that went into most of the Soviet Union's thermonuclear warheads, the ones aimed at the United States during the Cold War. The thought occurs that this gigantic hole, nearly a mile long, three-fourths of a mile wide, and 330 yards deep, would resemble the holes that exploding hydrogen bombs might have created in downtown Washington.

But that's just a daydream. In reality this hole, a giant pock mark in the steppe, is visible evidence that this remote corner of Siberia has been home for three decades to one of the world's largest uranium mines and processing plants. Mountains of tailings scattered across the steppe are another piece of evidence. The company town of Krasnokamensk, built from nothing at all to house 65,000 isolated people, is a third.

Uranium mining isn't what the Russian adventurers who conquered Siberia had in mind. They came for furs – sable and fox. Sable was the most prized accessory in the courts of Europe. Two pelts of black fox could be traded in 17th Century Russia for 50 acres of land, a cabin, five horses, 10 head of cattle, 20 sheep and dozens of chickens. Most of those adventurers were cossacks, a hearty breed of Russians who had pioneered the fertile South in earlier centuries, where they (alone among their countrymen) avoided the system of serfdom that helped hold back Russian development for so long.

Cossacks elected their own leaders, and took great pride in their self-sufficiency and energetic determination. Amazingly, the Cossacks who conquered Siberia did so in less than 70 years, moving 3,000 miles from the Ural mountains to the Pacific Ocean, across an expanse that in the modern world spans five time zones. They reached the Pacific in 1648.

There are still fox and sable in Siberia, in much smaller numbers than 300 years ago. But today's wealth is in Krasnokamensk's uranium, Chita's forests, Buryatia's gold, Irkutsk's natural gas, Norilsk's palladium and Surgut's huge reservoirs of oil. Siberia's wealth is Russia's wealth; without it, Russia's future would be grim. But with it the Russians have a chance to regain a considerable part of the stature and influence in the world they have lost in the last ten years-provided they can learn how to exploit these riches effectively.

Poisonous Lakes

If anyone ever offers you a day trip to Krasnokamensk, the wise response might be "nyet, spasibo" – no thanks. Not that it isn't a great adventure to come to this moonscape on the edge of the world, where the grassy steppe looks like split-pea soup spiced with flakes of pepper (the brown spots caused by a terrible drought this year). But to make the trip to and from the nearest outpost of civilization – Chita, capital of the gargantuan Chita oblast of southernmost Siberia – you need an uninterrupted 26-hour day.

We set out from Chita at 4 a.m. Chita Oblast (most of Russia's provincial jurisdictions, many of them bigger than powerful countries, are called oblasts) is part of the great expanse of Russian territory that was closed to foreigners in the Soviet era. Westerners in Moscow used to wonder if the Soviet authorities closed such places out of fear that traveling foreigners might learn real state secrets, or out of embarrassment for what they might see. Our trip here lends support to the "embarrassment" camp. The view from the window of our van was considerably worse now than it would have been ten years ago. Like most of Siberia, Chita is in the midst of an economic depression fully the equal of America's in the 1930s.

Seventy percent of the oblast's economic enterprises have collapsed since the Soviet Union disappeared. Abandoned factories, crumbling before your eyes, are a common sight. Even the surviving enterprises look like they are crumbling – reminders of the staggering infrastructure problems the new Russia faces.

The road to Krasnokamensk is a narrow ribbon of asphalt most of the way, its surface varying from smooth to potholed to a jaw-rattling washboard and back to smooth again – except during the last 100 miles or so of a trip about 450 miles long. That last stretch, leading to what was recently the world's largest uranium processing and mining facility (it now ranks fifth), is a dirt road, and not even a good one.road, but rather one packed with stones the sizes of tennis and golf balls Most travelers, we learned, use the train to get to Krasnokamensk, a 15-hour journey from Chita, but a smooth one. (Soviet-era air service to the city is now a dim memory.)

This could be the Russian definition of a company town. Without "the enterprise," as everyone here calls it (its real name is the Krasnokamensk Hydroelectrical Factory), this would be pristine steppe, as it was before the 1960s. And when the uranium runs out, perhaps in as little as 25 years, it will likely be impossible to sustain this community at all.

We were met by German Nikolayevich Kolov, 42, the deputy administrator of the city and until several years ago the chief engineer of the enterprise. Wary at first – the enterprise was still closed to outsiders, he said – he agreed that we could tour key installations from the outside. But without the general director's permission we could not be shown any interiors, and the general director was out of town.

That tour took us to the big hole, the first mine in Krasnokamensk, which was exploited for 20 years until almost fully depleted. Now ore is mined from underground seams, more than two dozen of them in the area. The hole, dry and empty, looks like the foundation for an enormous, un-built building. (Environmental activists in Chita say there are persistent rumors that some of the nuclear wastes Russia has agreed to accept, for large fees, from other countries could end up here.) Nearby, vast hills of tailings, at least 500 feet high, dominate the landscape.

From another high vantage point on a hill several miles from the hole we could see three big lakes created to hold the liquified waste produced by uranium processing. These wastes contain sulfuric acid used to separate uranium from its ore, and radioactive traces of uranium and other heavy metals. According to Paul Robinson, research director of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albequerque, NM, and an expert on uranium extraction who was invited to Krasnokamensk in 1996, the enterprise's then-chief ecologist acknowledged there was a problem with leakage from the ponds (lined with clay and plastic) that hold these wastes. The city's drinking water was threatened, Robinson was told.

The enterprise was badly burned by a documentary made in 1994 by a team from Greenpeace, which came to Krasnokamensk pretending to be journalists from Swedish television. Greenpeace charged that the enterprise flagrantly violated accepted norms for dealing with uranium, exposed its workers to unnecessary danger, and allowed some residents of the city to live in homes whose radon levels were many times higher than is considered tolerable for humans. Robinson concluded that while the enterprise has significant environmental problems, the Greenpeace report was exaggerated.

In their conversations with us, city and enterprise officials spoke at length about the extensive safety precautions they take. But they also acknowledged that people still live in a part of town where radon levels are sometimes astoundingly high, and said that for years the enterprise has been trying to get authorities in Moscow to pay to relocate those people.

Vodka and Dancers

Kolov, a six-footer who could easily tip the scales at 300 pounds, insisted that we accept his hispitality, and his insistence carried a good deal of weight. So on to the Alfa Restaurant, a city-owned enterprise recently spiffed up. In the big cities now, the restaurants are in private hands, sometimes very talented ones, but capitalism is moving slowly in Siberia.

In Krasnokamensk the Soviet Union still survives, in spirit if not in fact. When the enterprise recently celebrated is 30th year in full operation, the most productive workers won cars – the modern version of a Soviet medal. Enterprise employees are still sent on free vacations to nearby "resorts." The spread at the Alfa was extensive. Kolov, it soon became evident, welcomed the visit by foreigners as an excuse to tuck into some local specialties himself, including a bit of vodka. At his instruction, members of a famous local dance company had been invited to the Alfa to put on a demonstration of their considerable talents for the visitors. They went through half a dozen costume changes and danced to blaring recorded music in impressive synchronicity.

Over dinner Kolov disclosed a secret. "We're building a church," he revealed, an ambitious Russian Orthodox cathedral with seven onion-shaped cupolas, right in the heart of downtown. It will cost 400 million rubles (or about $15 million), the cost to be shared equally by four backers: the church, the enterprise, the city government and the oblast government. Kolov expects the church to cause quite a sensation when people realize what it is.

Return

Viktor, our driver, went out in search of two new spare tires, and at 8 p.m., after much jovial conversation involving Kolov, his press secretary and a local journalist who could not stop bragging about the tomatoes grow in Krasnokamensk, we were back in the van. About 20 miles out of town on the dirt highway back to Chita, a colossal moon the color of pale butter appeared suddenly above the rolling steppe, rising in the gray dusk of a long Siberian day. Under the nearly-full moon, the pale green and brown steppe – part of the land that nurtured Genghis Khan and his descendants, once the world's greatest warriors – seemed for that moment to be boundless, infinite. But it wasn't – in barely nine hours, we were back in Chita.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's official Press Center, 11.10.2005

Prisoner OG 98/3

Kommersant visited the correctional facility where Platon Lebedev is doing his
Yesterday, the medical office of the Correctional Facility of Minimum Security No.3 in Harp for a first time received from the attorneys Evgeny Baru and Konstantin Rivkin the medicines for inmate Platon Lebedev. And guards arrested Kommersant's photo reporter Vasily Shaposhnikov, when he tried to make a shot of the fence.

Uniformed Hat

In the morning, attorneys Baru and Rivkin went to the market. They were looking for a hat for Platon Lebedev. This task was not simple, however. In the correctional facility there was no hat of the right size for Platon Lebedev. The lawyers were permitted to buy a hat and to give it to the inmate, but the hat should meet all necessary standards. It cannot be from expensive fur. It has to be black and not tall -- so inmate Lebedev while standing in the row would not look different than other inmates. In stores and markets of the village Harp there was no such hat. However, the prison doctor took the medicines for Lebedev, which for some reason Moscow prison refused to take. The doctor signed for the medicines and promised to give them to Lebedev every time when he would write a request for the medicine. In other words, in order to get a pill the inmate should ask a written permission.

After long negotiations with the head of the correctional facility Alexander Zadorozhny, the attorneys received permission to send a watch and shaving safe razor to Lebedev. Also, the attorneys could buy a TV, but they cannot give it directly to the inmate, but to the whole 12th Regiment, where Lebedev would be living and working. Also, the lawyers have a right to subscribe to newspapers and magazines for Platon Lebedev. On the local post office Baru they subscribed for the inmate several political and entertaining publications, as well as a collection of Japanese crosswords, which Lebedev likes a lot.

Problematic Prisoner

"We subscribed the newspapers and magazines for you for the first quarter of 2006," Attorney Baru told his client through the glass during the evening meeting.

"Why did you get so greedy?" asked Lebedev from behind the glass. "Why only for one quarter?"

The lawyer just shrugged his shoulders. This short subscription probably shows the resolve of the attorneys to get Platon Lebedev to some other correctional facilities in a warmer place.

Then, the lawyers started to show Platon Lebedev through the glass some documents. They were pressing papers against the glass and Lebedev was reading them. Especially he was interested by the statement of Vladimir Putin. For easier reading Lebedev took off a temporary hat made from the felt.

"You look like a skin-head," Baru said.

The lawyer complained to the head of the correctional labor facility Zadorozhny that it is very difficult to work like that, when he had to press every document to the glass for his client to read. And the head of the prison showed lawyers a scale model of tank and self propelled cannon artfully made from the semi-precious stones and also complained. First of all, the prison head complained that it takes a lot of time for upbringing a good master with the stones. Unfortunately, today's prison terms are less and less. Second, he was complaining that he would like to provide normal conditions required by the law for the meeting with the attorneys' client (a separate room and a desk), but he doesn't have neither. Baru had even impression that Zadorozhny is not really happy with appearance of inmate Lebedev --there are too many problems from him in correctional facility and in the village as well. And the main problem is the journalists.

The Guarded Territory

Yesterday, for instance, the photo reporter of Kommersant Vasily Shaposhnikov got up early and went to Harp hoping to make good shots there. In the entrance to the village Shaposhnikov made a shot of the pole with the plaque "Harp -Northern Lights -Welcome." In the village he made a shot of the fence with the barbed wire and then another fence like that. Actually, it was the same fence only the long one. Shaposhnikov decided to make a third shot of the same fence, but, this time, it was a mistake. He took a position next to a indiscrete fiv-story building. However it was not a residential apartment building but the local office of Federal Penitentiary Service. There was a security camera. Actually all the houses in Harp have these security cameras.

A patrol arrived immediately and asked Shaposhnikov to get out of the car. The cab driver had o get out as well and the patrol convoyed both of them to the entrance of the correctional facility. The cab driver was complaining that he gets paid for the time and for that reason he can't go to jail, so he was quickly interrogated first and then released.

The interrogation of Vasily Shaposhnikov was enthusiastic.

"Are you first time in Harp?" the officer was asking.

"No, we were here yesterday," said photo reporter.

It was true. We came to the village yesterday to the local writer Pyotr Kozhevnikov and asked about the place. Shaposhnikov, unfortunately, did not remember name of the writer.

"Who did you visit? What was the goal of the visit?"

"I don't remember, some sort of guy. The correspondent was talking to him and I left because they were smoking there too much."

"Tell us the number of the house and the number of the apartment."

"I don't remember," Shaposhnikov answered. "Honestly, the cab delivered me there."

"Do you remember what the floor was, at least?"

Shaposhnikov didn't.

While answering the questions of the officer, Shaposhnikov named me, and gave my name and my address in hotel. Also, the Kommersant photo reporter said that the attorneys of Lebedev were traveling with us in one train and they live in the same hotel too, but he couldn’t remember the names of the lawyers.

The photographer was allowed to make a phone call. He called me:

“Valery, I was arrested. Now, I am with Lebedev in the same jail. Come, get me out.”

I went to save the comrade. And the officer decided that there is not much of a use of Shaposhnikov, so he started to tell him what to write on the explanation paper so he wouldn’t get criminally charged.

“Write that you came without any preparation and made shots from unprepared earlier points,” the officer suggested. “Otherwise, it might look as the prepared operation. Write that you did not have an agreement with the cab driver how to drive, or it would look like a conspiracy planned by the group of people.

First, they wanted to transfer photo reporter to the local police precinct, but then, the senior officer came and ordered Shaposhnikov released because of his first time being arrested. According to the photographer description, the senior officer was Zadorozhny himself.

Four hours after I arrived to the gates of the correctional facility. Shaposhnikov was brought to the gates by a mean-looking officer. He told me: “This is specially guarded territory. There are dangerous criminals kept in here who are doing 25 years. Photography is considered as a preparation for escape and can be pretty heavily prosecuted. Do not try to shoot again. There are patrols and cameras all over here.

We got in the car. Elderly cab driver turned his head to Shaposhnikov and asked him: ”So, sonny, you did your time? Congratulations. I have a bag in the back sit. There is some food there. Help yourself.”

by Valery Panyushkin

Kommersant, 11.2.2005

BBC News: Jailed tycoon rallies supporters

Jailed Russian billionaire businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky has issued a rallying cry to supporters to create a new political elite of "honest heroes".
In a full-page advertisement in the UK's Financial Times newspaper, he describes the current Russian authorities as a criminal bureaucracy.

He accuses them of trying to isolate and physically destroy him, but warns that the fight is just beginning.

It is unclear how he issued the statement from his Siberian jail.

The former head of Russian oil giant Yukos is serving an eight-year prison sentence in a penal colony for economic crimes. The tycoon, once Russia's richest man, was convicted of tax evasion and fraud.

The colony in Krasnokamensk, in the eastern Chita region close to the Chinese border, is about 4,700km (3,000 miles) east of Moscow.

Critics accuse him of ripping off his homeland's natural wealth for personal gain. His supporters say the case against him was politically motivated and he is paying the price for his political ambitions and links to opponents of President Vladimir Putin.

In the advertisement, Khodorkovsky says the Kremlin has tried to isolate him from his "country and its people" and "to physically destroy him".

"By doing so, today's Russian government has proven once again that it's not ready for an open and honest discussion with me (or for any straight talk with the opposition," he says.

"They hope Khodorkovsky will be forgotten."

New path

In his appeal to his supporters, he says Russia faces enormous challenges, needing to rebuild the army and legal system.

"Create from scratch a new breed of officials - those interested in the fate of the country and its people, not their own unbridled personal enrichment," he instructs them.

"We need to step off the dead-end path to making Russia a simple source of raw materials, to make the decisive turn in the direction of a new knowledge-based economy."

The BBC's Stephen Eke says that although the specific policy ideas the advertisement contains are not different from the liberal agenda Khodorkovsky espoused before he was sent to jail, the language is.

Our correspondent says this suggests the advertisement comes from the lips of his allies Leonid Nevzlin, Vladimir Dubov and Mikhail Brudno - all, like Khodorkovsky, Jewish, current or former billionaires, and one-time oligarchs but now in self-imposed exile in Israel.

No sympathy

Earlier this week, they held a press conference to warn of what they said was a plot to "physically eliminate" Khodorkovsky.

They also accused President Vladimir Putin of personal enrichment at the expense of society.

Our correspondent says many ordinary Russians, who tend to view the oligarchs as the robber-barons of Russian capitalism, would find that hypocritical.

The latest available poll suggested that two-thirds of Russians had absolutely no sympathy for Khodorkovsky, and four-fifths were uninterested, or totally uninterested, in what he had to say.

BBC, 10.2.2005
_________
Strange commentary from the BBC. This text was already published in Russian some days ago, when Mikhail's lawyers came back from Krasnokamensk. Nevzlin & partner only translated it and published in foreign newspaper.

RADIO FREE EUROPE : Khodorkovskii Lawyer Says Russia 'Rebuilding The Gulag'

On 16 October, Mikhail Khodorkovskii -- once Russia's richest man -- was interred at the Krasnokamensk penal colony, an isolated wasteland some 6,000 kilometers from Moscow. It was the latest, and most dramatic, move in the two-year ordeal of the former Yukos chief. But has the world heard the last of Khodorkovskii? One of his lawyers, Canadian Robert Amsterdam, says no. He spoke to RFE/RL today.

RFE/RL: Firstly, what can you tell us about Khodorkovskii's condition? It's now been more than two weeks since Khodorkovskii was taken to the Krasnokamensk penal colony. We know his wife Inna and some of his lawyers were able to see him last week. What did they have to say about Khodorkovskii's state of mind, and about the physical conditions at the prison?

Robert Amsterdam: I've spoken to the family. I can tell you that he's lost a tremendous amount of weight. I think it's very clear that all of us are shocked that the Russian Federation has been so transparent as to demonstrate to the world the resuscitation of the gulag. Vladimir Putin, who will be leading the G-8, is rebuilding the gulag. We really in the West need to understand the message that Mr. Putin is sending us. It isn't just that he wants to steal the oil and then send it to us, it is that he is prepared to be grotesquely obvious in his willingness to subvert democracy and to attack those who are viewed as even a possible source of opposition to him.

RFE/RL: Krasnokamensk is the site of a uranium-processing facility, and environmental and health standards are considered extremely low in the region. One human rights group put the average lifespan in the area at 42 years. Are you concerned about Khodorkovskii's ability to withstand the conditions of the prison for the next six years?

Amsterdam: Clearly, it is the intent of the Kremlin to continue to destroy his health in this sentence. The entire area is considered to be environmentally unsafe. We intend to bring this before every possible authority. His being placed there violates internal Russian law, it violates Article 3 of the European Convention, and it violates morality. So we intend to take steps to deal with it. But I certainly am not going to telegraph in advance any steps we may take to the Russians.

RFE/RL: As we know, Khodorkovskii is located over 6,000 kilometers away from Moscow; it takes a six-hour flight and a seven-hour drive to reach him. With this distance, it seems extremely difficult for him to maintain contact with his lawyers, and to maintain public awareness of his case. What are Khodorkovskii's visitation rights? Does he have access to any other form of communication?

Amsterdam: There's a difference between what he's allowed under the law and what he will be given. So if I tell you what the legal availability is, that isn't in any way reflective of what will happen to him. He is allowed a phone call frequently, but that hasn't been experienced yet. So we have to look at the track record before we can, in fairness, comment. I certainly want to avoid commenting about his prison or his prison authorities. I think that would be dangerous for him.

RFE/RL: Last week Khodorkovskii communicated for the first time from Krasnokamensk, through a very defiant, resolute statement posted on his website. Now, in the 2 November edition of the "Financial Times," there is a full-page ad from Khodorkovskii's associates, including Leonid Nevzlin, the majority shareholder of Menatep, which in turn holds a majority share in Yukos. The ad accuses the Kremlin of trying to "physically destroy" him and calling on supporters to help create a new political elite in Russia. Who is this advertisement meant to target? What kind of reaction are you hoping for from the West?

Amsterdam: This is not an ad taken out by Mr. Khodorkovskii. This is an ad taken out by friends of his, such as Mr. Nevzlin, who does not reside in the Russian Federation. I am sure that watching his close friend go through what he has has been extraordinarily painful for Mr. Nevzlin and for his colleagues who are now in Israel. I would gather that placing this ad is an attempt by them to demonstrate to the world that as long as they are living and breathing, Mr. Khodorkovskii will not be forgotten. Because I am sure that it is their great fear, as it is mine, that the moment the attention of the West turns away from him, something even more dramatic than being put into an environmentally unhealthy area will happen.

RFE/RL: All of these traumatic events have forced Khodorkovskii's associates and friends to adopt a kind of clan logic, supporting each other no matter what happens. We know that Berezovskii adopted the same approach. The Kremlin does the same. Do you feel that Russian politics or the Russian state is forcing Khodorkovskii's group to adopt this kind of clan logic?

Amsterdam: I don't think that's the case. In fact, to be fair, I think that's frankly very much not the case. I think Mr. Nevzlin and his folks have a very independent view, as is their right. I think Khodorkovskii's people are quite independent. But we have to be very careful in our mindset not to be too black-and-white about certain issues. Because there are people in the presidential administration who are aghast at what has happened to Khodorkovskii and Lebedev, and who recognize this is a violation of fundamental principles, and who want to make things right."

RFE/RL: Lawyers for Khodorkovskii's associate, Platon Lebedev, say they will appeal his six-year sentence at the Kharp high-security prison colony, in the Polar Urals. Is there a similar appeal under way for Khodorkovskii?

Amsterdam: I will not make that announcement here. It will be made at the appropriate time.

RFE/RL: Last week, while Russian Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko was in the United States, he was served a subpoena to appear in a U.S. court in connection with a lawsuit filed by minority shareholders of Yukos who say they collectively lost $3 million after the de facto renationalization of the oil giant. On the face of it, the lawsuit is potentially quite serious -- it targets the Russian government, four state-owned energy companies, and a number of government officials. But Khristenko, for one, doesn't seem to be taking it particularly seriously, and has suggested the case should be tried by a Russian court, and that it's Yukos that should be sued, not the government. How is this lawsuit likely to develop?

Amsterdam: What I can tell you is that Mr. Khristenko and others who have been involved in Yukos had better take the case seriously, because they will ultimately pay the price. And whether it's this year, it's next year, or it's 10 years, when you engage in criminal conduct, and when you steal assets, you can never make it right. And I have every belief there will be a day of reckoning for all of these officials who engaged in this theft, for all of these officials who have illegally imprisoned Khodorkovskii and Lebedev. They will all meet the ends they deserve.

RFE/RL: Russia is arguing that the United States has no jurisdiction in the shareholders' lawsuit because Yukos is a Russian company. Is this a viable argument?

Amsterdam: No, it's not. I'm not talking specifically about this case; I'm speaking generally. What the Russians are attempting to do in this case is pretend we're 50 years behind the times. We are in a new era of international law, we are in a new era of international human rights. They have signed the agreements; they need to read them.

RADIO FREE EUROPE

Mosnews : Yukos Shareholder Nevzlin Says Kremlin Intends to Kill Khodorkovsky

One of the owners of Yukos oil company’s main shareholder, Menatep Group, Leonid Nevzlin, said on Tuesday the Russian authorities intended to kill the jailed former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Menatep head Platon Lebedev.

During a news conference broadcast online, Nevzlin said the intention to kill Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, of which Khodorkovsky had written in a letter sent from custody, was confirmed by the fact that they were sent so far to remote prison colonies. He also reminded his audience that Khodorkovsky had attempted to register as a candidate for parliament, but failed due to the rapid consideration of his appeal and the sentence that sent him to eight years in prison.

Another well-known convict, retired commando Vladimir Kvachkov, suspected of the attempted murder of the Russian energy chief Anatoly Chubais, was able to register as candidate, Nevzlin pointed out. Nevzlin called the case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev politically motivated.

Another Menatep owner, Vladimir Brudno, said the case against Yukos’ tax debts had been forged by the Russian authorities to buy its main subsidiary, Yuganskneftefaz. He added that the same means had been used by the Russian authorities when buying Sibneft oil company.

Nevzlin was asked whether he would support former Russian PM Mikhail Kasyanov as the opposition candidate for president, to which he replied that Kasyanov had disappeared from Russian political life without having commented on the deal between state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom and Sibneft. This caused doubt over Kasyanov’s political independence. The deal proved to be a collusion between the acting and the former Russian regime aimed at personal enrichment, he said.

Nevzlin said there had never been such a level of corruption in Russia before. He also spoke about the pressure on the media in Russia. He added that the Reporters Without Borders had put Russia at 138th position among 167 countries in the freedom of press rating. Nevzlin asked how Russia would chair the G8 next year with such figures.

The shareholders plan to continue explaining to the international community what is going on in Russian business including the deal with Sibneft, Nevzlin said.

Nevzlin, Brudno and the third Menatep owner Vladimir Dubov are currently in Israel. They have been placed on the Russian wanted list for various charges including fraud.

In Mosnews, 10.1.2005