The search in the public-relations company "Agency of Strategic Communications". Why a deputy from "Yabloko" hung in a window. Ownerless $700 thousand. The website Prigovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on October 23, 2003.
On this day, on October 23, 2003, The Office of the Prosecutor General carried out investigative actions in the office of the company “Agency of Strategic Communications” (ASC). The piquancy of the emerged situation was allotted by two circumstances. First, the public-relations "ASC" conducted the election campaign of the party "Yabloko” in the course of the parliamentary election 2003. And its office “accidentally” neighbored “ASC”.
Second, everybody knew that "Yabloko” in various formats had been fertilized with Yukos money. For that, under the guise of "non-indifferent civil society," it returned favors the whole nine yards.
Apart from that, in the parliamentary “Elections 2003” the Khodorkovsky’s kindred simply bought 4 places out of 17 in the federal list of the party “Yabloko”. The long and the short of it, there was the whole selection of that “wonderful democracy” about which Khodorkovsky with his acolytes, including from the United States and Europe, nowadays are shedding crocodile tears.
QUEST FOR EVIDENCE
Having started the active search of evidence of tax and other machinations as early as in the first days of October, the investigation brigade was as if in quest – one array of evidence contained references to the storage place of other important documents, thus pulling out the whole chain of tax and offshore schemes. One of the arrays, after studying working notes seized in one of the offices, was found on the territory of the lyceum “Korallovo” – the con artists from Yukos had simply hidden documents and a server at the boarding school.
Another array of documents was seized in the “work location” of one of the main Yukos shareholders Vladimir Dubov, working under the shelter of the status of a State Duma deputy. He unsuccessfully tried to hide the documents and the server of the company “Menatep”, protecting all this with a status of “parliamentary immunity”. However, the status didn’t help – the dirty commercial machinations of the lawmaker from Yukos didn’t have any relation with parliamentary work, on which later the European Court of Human Rights separately pointed out to Dubov.
As the result, step by step, while studying documents and working notes, the investigation decided to pay a visit to the public relations company “ASC”, which served the party “Yabloko”, and the party itself, one might recall, was sponsored by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
DEPUTY HUNG IN THE WINDOW
Investigative actions began as usual – with the presentation of the search warrant with regard to the criminal case on the embezzlement in the SC “Apatit” and tax evasion. According to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, after the start of this procedure, nobody can enter the premises or go out, including latecomer lawyers.
However, soon to the venue came in a great hurry the excited deputies of the State Duma from the party "Yabloko” – Sergei Mitrokhin and Alexey Melnikov. Brandishing their certificates and the statuses of deputies, they tried to muscle in through the barrier. As the office of the party "Yabloko” was of no interest to investigators, the deputies were let pass. They either refused to go out, or they were not allowed to do so because of the investigative action, it does not matter. Perhaps, Mitrokhin simply wanted to decorate the whole picture – he hung in a window while, obviously, trying to shield from the investigation agitation materials of his party.
The press had a lot of fun observing such circus tricks – like, “the two were let in, but they forgot to let them out”.
“FOREST” SCREME OF TAX EVASION AND OWNERLESS 700 THOUSAND U.S. DOLLARS
In several days, the Office of the Prosecutor General, having thoroughly studied the obtained evidence, informed about what, actually, had been found and seized in the office of “ASC”. According to the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, five servers were seized, as well as databases of the tax agencies, including financial documents, operative materials relating to the activity of Yukos. They tried to destroy data on two servers which had to be restored. On deciphered servers, there were financial documents and operative materials pertaining to the activity of Yukos. According to this state agency, the question is of schemes of the “optimization” of Yukos tax payments in the Closed Administrative-Territorial Entity “Lesnoy”.
Apart from that, 700 000 ready money was withdrawn. The money was in the package of the bank "Atlanta" (United States). In the course of the search, the staffers of the company “ASC” could not explain the origin and the purpose of such an impressive sum of money, and thus it was defined as ownerless. The election documents of the party “Yabloko" which came to hand of the investigation, were guarantied safety and confidentiality, and that irritated very much Grigori Yavlinsky, who had sheltered in his party list people from Yukos”, noted the website Prigovor.ru.
(See also the previous article “On this day, Nevzlin was reminded of murders and attempted murders”. “In all cases, Nevzlin gave direct orders to Pichugin about arranging murders and executing them". The website Progovor.ru reminds its readers of what happened on October 22, 2004.
