Kommersant: Svetlana Bakhmina Gets Seven Years

The Simonovsky Court in Moscow found deputy head of the YUKOS-Moscow legal department Svetlana Bakhmina guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion yesterday and sentenced her to seven years in prison. Judge Tatyana Korneeva began her seven-hour reading of the verdict in the case by saying that Bakhmina committed embezzlement in especially large volume (8 billion rubles) as part of a criminal group that consisted of her, former head of the YUKOS legal department Dmitry Gololobov and "persons unknown" in a scheme involving assets of YUKOS affiliate Tomskneft, which were sold to dummy companies belonging to YUKOS. The verdict repeated the findings of prosecutor Nikolay Vlasov practically word for word. A Tomskneft representative stated at the trial stated that no embezzlement had taken place and that the company has no claims against Bakhmina. Bakhmina was also accused of tax evasion for the nonpayment of 606,000 rubles' taxes on insurance annuities received in 2001 and 2002.
The court noted that Bakhmina did not acknowledge her guilt and "indicated that she worked under the leadership of Vasily Alexanyan [now a vice president of YUKOS, who was arrested April 7] and she also received instructions from Gololobov, she did not have the right to sign documents, she did not know anything about anyone's plans to embezzle the property of Tomskneft and she was never instructed to implement criminal plans. Tomskneft property was not entrusted to her, she did not manage it [property] and was not authorized in managerial issues. She did not pay taxes because insurance payments are not taxable." After that, the judge spent several hours listing the testimony of witness and contents of documents.

Many witnesses, even those for the prosecution, stated that Bakhmina, who was also a member of the Tomskneft board of directors, had no decisive role in company affairs and made no decisions. Her lawyers were clearly unprepared for the outcome of the case. The court, taking into account that Bakhmina is the mother of two small children, that she paid the tax arrears in the course of the trial, as well as the state of her health and general character, sentenced her to six and a half years' imprisonment for embezzlement and two years for tax evasion. It then found it possible to partially merge the sentences for a total of seven years. The court found no basis for amnesty.

Bakhmina listened to the verdict and sentence impassively. Her lawyers did not comment immediately after the conclusion of the hearing, but later promised to appeal the sentence. Prosecutor Vlasov called the court's verdict a “right decision” and said that it was "not the first or last" YUKOS case. The prosecution had asked for nine years' imprisonment. Gololobov, who is wanted in the same case, called the sentence “senseless and merciless.”

by Marina Lepina, Vladislav Trifonov