“From machinations with shares of the JSC “Apatit” to tax evasion as physical person”. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on March 28, 2005 in Moscow and in Houston.
On this day, on March 28, 2005, in the Meschansky Court of Moscow began oral arguments of the parties within the litigation on the criminal case of the former head of the Oil Company Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the International Financial Association MFO “Menatep” Platon Lebedev, and former director general of the CJSC “Volna” Andrey Kraynov.
(See also the article “On this day, 200 volumes of the criminal case were presented to Khodorkovsky”).
According to the standing order, first to take the floor was the state prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin. The state prosecutor during two hours read out the accusation with regard to Mikhail Khodorkovsky – from the machinations with the chares of the JSC “Apatit” to tax evasion of Khodorkovsky as a physical person. In the words of the state prosecutor, the analysis of the collected documents allows to make an unambiguous and categorical conclusion about the guilt of the defendants of the crimes imputed to them, despite the fact that Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, and, partly, Kraynov denied their guilt”.
The State Prosecution, on totality of the proved accusations, asked the court to sentence Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to 10 years of imprisonment. For the third defendant, for Andrey Kraynov, the prosecution asked for 5.5 years of suspended sentence with probation period of 5 years. A suspended sentence is possible, said the prosecutor, as the defendant partially admitted his guilt and helped the justice, finally, to prevail”.
“VAIN DREAMS OF KHODORKOVSKY’S HENCHMEN ABOUT 20 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS”
On the same day, on March 28, 2005, in Houston, state Texas, in the name of the Oil Company Yukos was filed a notification that the oil company Yukos withdraws all its claims with regard to a whole group of defendants. According to the document, that the business press referred to and that was filed to the Federal Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of the state Texas in Houston, the oil company Yukos withdraws the lawsuit against “Gazpromneft”, “Gazprom”, “Baykalfinansgrup” and “Rosneft” – they all were mentioned in Yukos claims on the “possible recovery of losses” amounted to 20 billion dollars.
It was mention in this notification that from the list of defendants on this case, on March 23, 2005, were excluded the Russian government and “Deutsche Bank”. Apart from that, according to the document, on February 7, 2005, Yukos excluded from the list of defendants of its bankruptcy case the following banks – “ABN AMRO Bank N.V., BNP Paribas, Calyon, JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. In this notification, the court was also informed that on February 11 from the list of the defendants had been excluded the CJSC “Interkom” and the JSC “First Venture Company”.
The notification had for the American court, so to say, an acknowledging character as there was no analytical part in the document clearly explaining this decision of the plaintiffs from Yukos. As there was no so beloved by the “borehole propagandists” loud statements for the press with explanations.
Yet, the failure in the American court was recorded on the eve, when Yukos announced about the termination of its court activities on the territory of the United states, having admitted as useless its efforts “to save the assets of the company” with the help of the American judicial instruments. And the notification on the withdrawal of claims to the banks, firms and Russian government was only a technical matter” – notes the website Prigovor.ru.
(See also the previous article “On this day, auditors of PricewaterhouseCoopers were brought out into the open”. “Composition of auditors’ reports, containing knowingly inaccurate information, directed at helping the Oil Company Yukos to evade taxes…” The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on March 27, 2007).
