“I have no personal accounts neither in Switzerland, nor in other countries, nowhere, except Russia”, lied the “transparent” billionaire. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers about what happened on May 12, 2004.
On this day, on May 12, 2004, the defense of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the oil company Yukos, issued a motion with the Moscow City Court to free Khodorkovsky from custody, as the investigation of the first criminal case, actually, was finished. As explained Genrikh Padva, one of Khodorkovsky’s defense counsels, May 13 is set as the date of the ending of the procedure for Khodorkovsky and his defense to get acquainted with the materials of the criminal case, and, after signing of corresponding protocols, the investigation will be formally completed. In this connection, said the lawyer, the defense sees no reason for keeping Khodorkovsky under arrest. Naturally, the lawyers, doing their job, didn’t forget to announce that after the studying of the materials of the case “the defense has come to firm conclusion that there is no proof of his guilt”.
The problem of the defense was that during the proceedings not only the lawyers spoke, but also Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself. With the help of videoconferencing, he took the floor from his cell in the pre-trail detention center “Matrosskaya Tishina”. He said he considered his detention in custody unfounded. According to his words, one of the reasons of his arrest had been the assertion of the investigation about his bank accounts abroad. “This is not true. This defiles my reputation. I have no personal accounts neither in Switzerland, nor in other countries, nowhere, except Russia”, said Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Apart from that, he, for unknown reason, told about some marvelous laws in America and in Europe, which were intended for local economic criminals, and if he were put in prison there he would already be free. However, Khodorkovsky’s arguments didn’t impress the Moscow City Court. The level of restriction remained the same – detention in custody. Among other reasons of such a decision, could be his incongruous attempt to lie to the Court.
A SCHEME TO WORK WITH “NONEXISTENT ACCOUNTS”
In fact, numerous firms of various character had been created outside Russia, including offshores, which, in essence, were purses of Yukos “major shareholders”. All these foreign firms-purses had their own accounts which were controlled by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. The swindlers from Yukos disposed of the money in these firms-purses as their own. All this was established by the investigation, and, correspondingly, contained in the materials of the criminal case. Moreover, the Court was critical towards the declaration of Khodorkovsky, because, on the same day, on May 12, 2004, in the same Moscow City Court, Yukos lawyers attempted to challenge the arrest of the Swiss accounts, belonging to the defendants of the Yukos case.
The session was postponed due to technical reasons, but among those persons whose accounts had been frozen in Switzerland, was a man named Khodorkovsky, who tried to assure the Moscow City Court he had no accounts neither in Switzerland, nor in other countries.
(See also the article “On this day, Yukos was covering itself with a human shield made of its own employees”. $5 billion, arrested in Switzerland, were misrepresented as “pension savings” of Yukos employees).
As early as in March 2004, the Swiss Prosecution blocked personal accounts of the defendants of the Yukos case in five banks to the total amount of 6.2 billion Swiss francs (about 5 billion U.S. dollars).
(See also the article “On this day, a Swiss trace of Khodorkovsky was found” Khodorkovsky’s “chemical” firms).
According to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia, at issued was not the freezing of shares, assets or other securities, but personal accounts, including those connected with the Yukos case. It is clear that Khodorkovsky, playing with words and terms, was attempting to mislead not only the Court, but general public as well.
THE EXPOSURE OF THE ACCOUNTS HAS SHOWN – KHODORKOVSKY LIED INSOLENTY
Later, in 2011, “during the inspection of clients’ data of the affiliate of the Swiss bank “Julius Baer” in the town Munster in the west part of Germany, the investigator who were interested in discovering German tax abusers, found out, en passant, financial traces of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was pointed out that Khodorkovsky “has invested in the bank from 15 to 20 million euros – in his name and in names of his relatives”.
And in Ireland, on accounts of “Bank of Ireland”, were found and frozen $100 million belonging to the “borehole” swindler Khodorkovsky. He sued for this money as for his own, having promised to spend them on “development of civil society”. The money was given back to him. But Khodorkovsky once more cheated everybody, and he spends it not on development of civil society, but on collaborationism, trying, in particular, to publicly incline various persons among Russian citizens to high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and trick them to help a foreign state to inflict damage to the Russian Federation. At present, this “supporter of the traitor Vlasov and borehole swindler”, not only cooperates full swing with those foreign countries that openly proclaim the policy aiming to eliminate Russia, but also pays for the support of this line, and these are already signs of component elements of the crime under the same Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation”, notes the website Prigovor.ru.
(See also the previous article “On this day, Yukos tower went under the hammer”. 707 steps; heated competition at action sales for the property of “robber-barons”. The final price of the lot exceeded 100 billion 091 million 976 thousand 956 rubles. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on May 11, 2007).