The Khodorkovsky case: A new Moscow show trial

[Babur]

The Khodorkovsky case
A new Moscow show trial

Apr 2nd 2009 | MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition
A fresh trial of Russia’s jailed oligarch is a critical test for President Medvedev





BIG changes in Russian political life are often ushered in by trials. The first show trial of the Shakhty engineers in 1928 paved the way for Stalin’s consolidation of power in 1929. The 1935-36 trials of Kamenev and Zinoviev, two Bolshevik revolutionaries who fell out with Stalin, heralded the great terror a year later. The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, which opened in Moscow on March 31st, could be as pivotal for Russian political life today.
This is the second trial of Mr Khodorkovsky—and the first under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. It may earn Mr Medvedev either a place in history or a footnote in the story of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. The arrest of Mr Lebedev in July 2003, followed by that of Mr Khodorkovsky in October 2003, ended in the destruction of their Yukos oil company and eight-year jail terms for both men. It heralded a turn away from the liberalism of the 1990s towards an authoritarian corporatism. And it began the redistribution of property and power towards former and present security-service men, collectively known as siloviki.

Mr Khodorkovsky has asserted in interviews that it was the siloviki’s informal leader, Igor Sechin, now deputy prime minister, who initiated the attack on Yukos. He says that the siloviki favour isolation over integration, secrecy over transparency and repression over the rule of law. The Yukos dismemberment was their victory. It ended a brief period of politically independent courts, turning them into a mechanism of repression. As Lyudmila Alekseeva, a noted human-rights advocate and dissident, puts it, Mr Khodorkovsky was not a prisoner of conscience and was not tried for his beliefs—but he is a victim of political repression.
His firmness and dignity in jail have indeed brought Mr Khodorkovsky closer to generations of political prisoners in Russia, a point he underlined at the opening of his trial this week by adopting a slogan of 1970s dissidents: “Power: carry out your laws”. This ought to resonate with Mr Medvedev, who likes to advertise his background as a lawyer and his priorities of making the courts independent and fighting what he has labelled “legal nihilism”.
The defence lawyers argue that the case against Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev is a prime example of legal nihilism. It ignores the universal rule that nobody can be tried for the same crime twice. And it goes over the same territory and time. In the first trial, Mr Khodorkovsky and his partners were accused of tax evasion. Now they are charged with the embezzlement of 350m tonnes of oil and laundering the proceeds through offshore trading companies. This is the same oil on which Mr Khodorkovsky was said not to have paid enough tax, says Vadim Klyuvgant, Mr Khodorkovsky’s lawyer.
Mr Klyuvgant says that none of the 188 volumes of prosecution evidence in the case explains how Mr Khodorkovsky stole Yukos’s entire oil production over six years. Instead they imply that the existence of what was once the country’s largest and most transparent firm was illegal. In that case, Mr Khodorkovsky retorted in court, anyone (including the prosecutors) who bought petrol from a Yukos filling station in those years participated in the crime.
The maximum sentence for the charges is 22 years. Yuri Shmidt, a lawyer whose father was jailed both in 1929 and in 1937, says that “they could not bring these charges against Khodorkovsky in 2004. The Kremlin was still mindful of public opinion at home and abroad. Today it feels it can do whatever it likes.” And yet the outcome of the second trial is uncertain.


For one thing, the public mood is different. In 2003 Mr Khodorkovsky’s arrest was seen as the first sign of the state’s reckoning with the unpopular oligarchs, who had not deserved their sudden riches. His imprisonment seemed to many to be just, if not strictly legal. Today, he is a prisoner who has lost everything and did not break down in a tough Siberian prison camp. He commands far more sympathy and respect than bureaucrats and politicians.
The case was initiated in 2006 but has lain dormant for the past year. It has come to the fore now for two reasons. Mr Khodorkovsky’s sentence runs out in 2011, a few months before the next presidential election, which could put Mr Putin back in the Kremlin. A free (and popular) Mr Khodorkovsky could yet interfere with this plan by running himself, or backing another candidate.
Even more alarming for the Kremlin is that Yukos’s former management has brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. If the court finds that Russia applied the law retrospectively and unlawfully levied $34 billion in back taxes that destroyed the company, or that it singled out Yukos to disguise expropriation, it could order the government to compensate the company and its shareholders. This embarrassing prospect is so serious that some claim it prompted the Kremlin to discuss whether to pull out of the Council of Europe.
The coincidence in the timing of the Strasbourg case and the Moscow trial is striking. On January 29th the European court declared that the Yukos case was admissible. Within days, the Russian prosecutors had issued a criminal indictment against Mr Khodorkovsky, having concluded their investigation two years earlier. The Kremlin may be hoping that a Russian court ruling that declared Yukos’s operations to be illegal could enable it to stall the Strasbourg case.
But as Kirill Rogov, a political analyst, argues, those who started this case cannot win it politically. To convict Mr Khodorkovsky this time round would raise doubts over his guilt in the first case: the charges look contradictory. But nor can they just let Mr Khodorkovsky go. Pragmatists in the Kremlin may prefer to negotiate with Mr Khodorkovsky, offering him an acquittal or short sentence in exchange for dropping Yukos’s claims to compensation and showing his gratitude.
As a lawyer, Mr Medvedev has little interest in being tainted by another sham trial in Moscow. He has been careful to distance himself from the Yukos affair. Mr Khodorkovsky acknowledges this. In one interview through his lawyers he said: “I respect Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s legitimate president, although his political views are not completely clear to me. He certainly did not plunder Yukos and has nothing to fear from Platon Lebedev or myself.” At the opening of the trial, Mr Khodorkovsky cited Mr Medvedev’s words about law and corruption. But he did not pull any punches when talking about the prosecutors who put him in jail.
Letting Mr Khodorkovsky out must have attractions for Mr Medvedev. It would strengthen him as a force in Russian politics, gain him international kudos and lay the Yukos ghost that still haunts the Kremlin. But to achieve all this he has to convince Mr Putin and fight those who benefited from the dismantling of Yukos and want Mr Khodorkovsky in prison for the rest of their lives.

http://www.economist.com/world/europ...ry_id=13415161

It will be interesting to see the result of this trial

[Panzerbear]

I am sorry, but what the do you expect President Medvedev to do? fire the judge and go judge Khodorkovski himself? a trial is a trial, even in Russia. whether or not he is guilty - it is up to the judge to decide and no govt bureaucrat should interfere in this process, especially the president!

I swear to god, if this thread turns into yet another " Russia" debate, I will lose my last ounce of respect for you.

[Babur]

I am sorry, but what the do you expect President Medvedev to do? fire the judge and go judge Khodorkovski himself? a trial is a trial, even in Russia. whether or not he is guilty - it is up to the judge to decide and no govt bureaucrat should interfere in this process, especially the president!

I swear to god, if this thread turns into yet another " Russia" debate, I will lose my last ounce of respect for you.

chill man

rich people have problems because they have all the incentives to escape paying taxes to the govt .

did Khodorkovski use all sorts of elaborate schemes to shelter his company's income from taxes? yes, most likely. was this a very gray area, bordering on illegal? yes, most likely.
was Khodorkovski the only person who did this back then? of course not.

I think the contraversy here is not that Khodorkovski is innocent, but the fact that he is the only one who is getting sued over this (which arguably makes it appear as a show trial by obviously "evil" Russian govt).

I wouldn't say that the Russian government are evil but they're far from perfect

[bushbush]

lesson: rich people have problems too.

[Panzerbear]

rich people have problems because they have all the incentives to escape paying taxes to the govt .

did Khodorkovski use all sorts of elaborate schemes to shelter his company's income from taxes? yes, most likely. was this a very gray area, bordering on illegal? yes, most likely.
was Khodorkovski the only person who did this back then? of course not.

I think the contraversy here is not that Khodorkovski is innocent, but the fact that he is the only one who is getting sued over this (which arguably makes it appear as a show trial by obviously "evil" Russian govt).