Oligarchy

[TsarSamuil]

The Rise and Fall of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Update 1)

Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were declared guilty by a judge at the culmination of their second new trial in a Moscow district court on Monday.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who have already spent seven years behind bars for tax evasion, are facing new charges of embezzling 218 million tons of oil from Khodorkovsky's former oil firm Yukos and laundering over 3 billion rubles ($97.5 million) in revenues.

Khodorkovsky's background

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was born June 26, 1963, in Moscow, studied at the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology, where he started building a career as a communist functionary, becoming deputy head of the Komsomol (the Communist Youth League) organization at his university.

Later, using his Komsomol connections, Khodorkovsky opened his first business in 1986, a private cafe, and then in 1987, the Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of the Youth. The center imported and resold computers, as well as a range of other products.

By 1988, he had built an import-export business with a turnover of $10 million a year.

In 1989, Khodorkovsky and his business partners established the Menatep Bank.

In December 1995, as a result of the so-called shares-for-loans auctions, Khodorkovsky's Menatep Group took control of the Yukos oil company. A few years later, he was probably Russia's richest man.

Khodorkovsky and his company initially earned a reputation for dubious business practices, including diluting stakes held by foreign shareholders, notably the American investor Kenneth Dart.

After the 1998 financial crisis Yukos tumbled in value, but Khodorkovsky held on to the firm, dragging minority shareholders into courts to keep control of his empire.

Just two years later however, he was the darling of the Western stock markets, with a commitment to corporate governance, and an image makeover for himself - gone was the moustache and thick-framed glasses.

In April 2003, Khodorkovsky announced Yukos's merger with another oil giant, Sibneft, creating an empire that at its height produced more oil than OPEC member Qatar. The merger later came undone, but discussions continued on other possible mergers including with Western companies.

The times had changed in other ways, too. Vladimir Putin's ascent to the premiership and then the presidency meant that the days of the oligarchs calling the shots were over. Putin famously held a meeting with them all in the Kremlin, telling them to stay out of politics if they wished to keep control of the assets so many of them had acquired by illegitimate means.

It was a warning Khodorkovsky seemed to ignore. He was determined not to pay the increasing burden of tax falling on Russia's huge oil and minerals companies, and set out to buy off opposition MPs in the Duma, and even making overt statements about running for the presidency himself one day.

To many in Russia, this was the moment he had gone too far, and the move that condemned him to his fate.

Prosecution

Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003 on fraud and tax evasion charges in what Kremlin critics say marked a turning point in Vladimir Putin's presidency by giving hardliners the upper hand.

In 2005, Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in a medium security prison, which was later reduced to eight years.

In February 2007, new charges of embezzlement and money laundering were brought against both Khodorkovsky and Lebedev just months before they were to become eligible for parole.

Khodorkovsky ridiculed the charges of stealing 350 million metric tons of oil worth $30 billion from a company that he controlled.

The charges were also questioned by Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko, former trade minister and current Head of Sberbank German Gref, and former Central Bank Chief Viktor Gerashchenko.

In May 2010, former primer minister and current opposition leader Kasyanov said the new charges against Khodorkovsky were ludicrous and politically motivated.

He said that Putin, while president, had been angered by Khodorkovsky's financial support for the Communist Party, liberal Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces.

Leading figures in Russia including Vladimir Putin have consistently denied any political motivation behind their convictions.

New verdict

The Khamovniki District Court said on Monday Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had headed an organized group committing financial crimes in Russia's oil business via their oil company Yukos.

The court also ruled that Yukos had signed fake agreements with its subsidiaries Yuganskneftegaz, Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft on the purchase of oil and buying oil products from them at prices that were half or a quarter of the average.

The court said it dropped some of the charges against the former Yukos head and his business partner because the statute of limitations had expired, but did not provide details.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's defense earlier said prosecutors could press a third set of charges against the ex-Yukos executives in the near future.

When asked about the Khodorkovsky case during his question-and-answer session on December 16, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said: "I think that a thief belongs in jail."

MOSCOW, December 27 (RIA Novosti)

[TsarSamuil]

Russia's foreign minister lashes out at criticism over Khodorkovsky verdict (Update 2)

The Russian judiciary system is completely independent from the positions of the Russian Federation and any other foreign government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

The Khamovniki District Court in Moscow on Thursday sentenced ex-Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev to a total of 14 years in prison in the second trial involving Yukos assets. With time already served counting towards this total, both men could remain behind bars until 2017.

"They (the courts, ed.) are independent from Russian and other foreign governments," Lavrov told leading foreign journalists in Moscow when asked to comment on Khodorkovsky's new sentence.

Many Western organizations and countries, including the United States and the European Union, have condemned the verdict as harsh and unfair, and expressed concern over the fact that the judicial system in Russia has shown no signs of improvement despite President Dmitry Medvedev's pledge to make it just and transparent.

"The sentence is a blow to the rule of law in Russia. Everything about the charges and the trial indicates that the case against him is political," Rachel Denber, acting head of Human Rights Watch in Europe and Central Asia, said earlier on Friday.

The lawyers of ex-oil tycoon Khodorkovsky and Lebedev on Friday sent an appeal to the Khamovniki District Court on its ruling to sentence the two businessmen, who have already served eight years of a previous sentence, and were sentenced to 14 years on Thursday for a second round of charges brought against them.

"And if anyone is extremely concerned over the verdict, then I would like to remind them that anyone who is sentenced has the right to an appeal according to law, which, according to reports from the media, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's lawyers have already made," Lavrov said.

The lawyer for the ex-head of Yukos, Karina Moskalenko, said that so far only a short version of an appeal has been submitted because the defense plans to submit a full appeal within the 10-day timeframe allowed by Russian law.

"In the short version of the appeal, we only express our disagreement with the guilty verdict and ask the Moscow Court to stop the process of the criminal charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev," Moskalenko said, adding: "A full version of the appeal with all of our arguments and grounds to stop the proceedings will be submitted; as soon as we get a copy of the sentencing, we will submit [the full appeal] because we have a number of claims against both the verdict itself and the court protocol."

Judge Viktor Danilkin delivered the sentence on Thursday after convicting Russia's once richest man Khodorkovsky of stealing 218 million tons of oil from his own company, Yukos, and laundering the proceeds, worth around $100 million.

Another of Khodorkovsky's defense team, Yury Shmidt, said after the trial they were planning to appeal since "the verdict is illegal, unjustified, not based on the real evidence and was made under pressure."

MOSCOW, December 31 (RIA Novosti)

[srbin]

Arrested oil tycoon passed shares to banker.

LONDON (Agence France-Presse) — Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's shares in the Russian oil giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker Jacob Rothschild, under a deal they concluded prior to Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest, the Sunday Times reported.

Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr. Rothschild, 67, under a "previously unknown arrangement" designed to take effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky could no longer "act as a beneficiary" of the shares, it said.

Mr. Khodorkovsky, 40, whom Russian authorities arrested at gunpoint and jailed pending further investigation last week, was said by the Sunday Times to have made the arrangement with Mr. Rothschild when he realized he was facing arrest.
Mr. Rothschild now controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost $13.5 billion, the newspaper said in a dispatch from Moscow.

newsmine.org/archive/cabal-el...rothschild.txt

And guess what happened to the shares which Mikhail Khodorkovsky passed to Jacob Rothchild? They turned into useless paper after a court in Moscow declared Jacob Rothchild controlled oil giant Yukos bankrupt.

Khodorkovsky grew up in an ordinary Soviet family in a two-room apartment in Moscow. He has a Jewish father.

[TsarSamuil]

Russia’s pyramid scheme architect vows to destroy world financial system.



The notorious organizer of a 1990s pyramid scheme whose collapse cost millions of Russians their life savings pledged on Friday to bring about the downfall of the global financial system.

“I want to destroy the world financial system. I believe it is unjust,” MMM pyramid scheme organizer Sergei Mavrodi told Russia’s NTV TV station.

“I want to create a financial apocalypse…it will be everywhere… I have offers from every country. From the US, from India…from India. This system will be everywhere, this is the Internet we are talking about, there are no borders,” he said.

Mavrodi, 55, recently unveiled his new project in a video blog. MMM-2011, with the three Russian letters standing for "We Can Do a Lot," uses the online payment system, WebMoney, to allow investors to buy tickets that work like shares, but have no real value. The project's mastermind has promised investors returns of 20-30 percent per month.

The former mathematician, who was released from prison in 2007, described the new project as a "financial social network." While the 1994 scheme used an aggressive TV and radio advertising campaign to reel in investors, the new project relies solely on the Internet, a move which many see as a bid to attract the attention of Russia's technologically-savvy youth

Mavrodi's 1994 swindle, which came to be regarded as a symbol of the lawlessness of the chaotic 1990s in Russia, was one of the largest of hundreds of other such schemes of that era. The projects took advantage of the ignorance of a nation still learning the basics of a new capitalist system. Ponzi schemes became so commonplace that their prices were quoted on the front pages of newspapers.

According to different estimates, the MMM scam attracted between two and five million investors, including a number of high-profile celebrities, who lost around $1.5 billion when it collapsed.

Mavrodi continues to insist that he did not break any laws and blames government interference for the collapse of the project. He still enjoys popular support and was even handed a bouquet of flowers on his release from prison.

An express poll conducted by the Ekho Moskvy radio station suggested that around 25 percent of Russians would be willing to take part in the new pyramid scheme.

MOSCOW, January 21 (RIA Novosti)

[TsarSamuil]

Police Search Deutsche Bank Office in Russia.

NYTimes.com
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
February 2, 2011, 3:33 pm
6:10 p.m. | Updated

MOSCOW — Masked policemen raided Deutsche Bank’s main Moscow office on Wednesday, questioning bankers and unnerving employees.

Police said they were searching for documents in a real estate deal linked to a member of the Russian Parliament, now living in exile in the United States.

The parliamentarian, Ashot Yegiazaryan, had business dealings with companies tied to the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, who fell from favor and resigned last fall.

Deutsche Bank said in a statement that the search concerned the dealings of a single client, and that the firm’s own work was not a matter of suspicion. The bank “continues to operate as normal,” the statement said.

In the months since Mr. Luzhkov’s resignation, the police have raided dozens of businesses seen as close to his administration.

On Wednesday, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement that it searched Deutsche Bank’s offices for evidence in a embezzlement case related to the reconstruction of Hotel Moscow, a Stalinist-era landmark off Red Square.

The committee said it suspected an aide to Mr. Yegiazaryan of embezzling $87.5 million from a company overseeing the hotel construction that Deutsche Bank had partly financed. The company, in turn, was fully owned by the city government, the committee said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Yegiazaryan, still a member of Parliament in the Liberal Democratic Party, has fled Russia. Through his lawyers, he has said he is a victim of political repression. Separately, Russian prosecutors on Monday said that they had issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Yegiazaryan.

Whatever the legal or political missteps of such clients, foreign bankers in Moscow have for years implored the government to refrain from conducting such jarring raids on bank offices. Sometimes, police wielding guns force stock analysts and economists onto the floors of their offices. This happens often enough in Moscow financial institutions that such incidents are referred to as a “masky show,” a term coined in the 1990s when it began.

The practice continues, though President Dmitri A. Medvedev has said he wants Moscow to become an international financial center that competes with the likes of Hong Kong and Singapore in emerging market business.

In November, police armed with automatic weapons raided a bank belonging to the billionaire Aleksandr Y. Lebedev, a part owner of the national airline Aeroflot. Mr. Lebedev said he was sitting in his office when men in commando outfits wearing masks burst in, looking for documents in a two-year-old white-collar crime case.

[TsarSamuil]

Vid,
rt.com/news/prime-time/berezovsky-yachts-arrested-france/

Yachts owned by Berezovsky seized in France - Russian prosecutors.

French authorities have impounded two yachts believed to belong to fugitive Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office said on Thursday.

"Two of Boris Berezovsky's yachts have been seized in France at the request of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office as part of an ongoing criminal investigation against him," spokeswoman Marina Gridneva said.

The yachts, worth around $20 million, were used by members of Berezovsky's "inner circle," she added.

She did not say when the yachts were seized or what new charges Berezovsky was facing.

In 2007, a Moscow court found Berezovsky, currently residing in Britain, guilty of stealing 215 million rubles from the Aeroflot airline and sentenced him in absentia to six years in prison.

In another case, Berezovsky was sentenced to 13 years for stealing over 60 billion rubles from the AvtoVAZ automaker.

MOSCOW, February 17 (RIA Novosti)

[TsarSamuil]

Abramovich loses bid to reject Berezovsky $3.3 bln lawsuit.

London's Court of Appeal has rejected a request by Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich to dismiss a lawsuit filed by his former business partner Boris Berezovsky.

The court upheld the decision announced by Judge Sir Anthony Colman in March 2010 to set the date for preliminary hearings in the $3.3-billion compensation lawsuit by self-exiled Kremlin critic Berezovsky for October 3, 2011.

The lawyers of tycoon Abramovich have been trying to reject the claim against him by his fellow Russian billionaire Berezovsky as 'groundless,' but the British courts have refused to strike out the action.

Berezovsky intends to demand compensation from Abramovich for what he insists was a forced sale in 2000-2003 of shares in the Sibneft oil company, the Rusal aluminum company and the TV channel ORT at lower than market prices.

Both businessmen now live most of the time in Britain. In October 2007, British newspaper The Daily Mail reported that Berezovsky personally handed a subpoena in this case to Abramovich, when they met by chance in a London luxury clothing store on Sloane Street.

LONDON, February 23 (RIA Novosti)

[TsarSamuil]

Moscow is now the billionaire capital of the world.

Wed, Mar 9 2011

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian oligarchs are back with a bang, making Moscow the billionaire capital of the world.

Profiting from a boom in commodities, the number of billionaires in Russia, most of whom built their empires during the country's anarchic 1990s, grew to 101 from 62 last year, Forbes said in its annual list of the world's richest people.

Moscow is home to 79 of Russia's billionaires, more than any other city in the world.

Russia accounts for a third of Europe's 300 billionaires, and 15 of the world's 100 richest people, more than all the other so-called BRIC countries combined (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and more than Saudi Arabia.

Leading Russia's billionaires is steel baron Vladimir Lisin. His estimated personal wealth of $24 billion has increased by some $10 billion since last year, moving him up 18 notches to place 14th among the richest.

Lisin's worth, and that of many other Russians on the list, has reflected increases and declines in commodity stock valuations and Russia's economy. Oil, metals and other natural resources account for most of the country's budget revenue.

Lisin, 54, has seen Novolipetsk Steel, which he controls, return to nearly pre-financial crisis levels.

Russia's benchmark commodity-heavy RTS exchange has reversed most of the losses it incurred during the crisis. It crossed the 2,000-point mark earlier this month, far above the 500 points seen in late 2008.

Lisin, one of Russia's secretive tycoons, is followed by another metal magnate, Alexei Mordashov, the major shareholder and chief executive of Russia's biggest steelmaker Severstal. Mordashov moved to 29 on the list from 70 a year ago.

He replaced Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team in the United States, as Russia's second-richest man. Russia's billionaires are known for fantastic displays of wealth that include buying sport teams around the world.

Prokhorov, chief executive of Russia's largest gold miner Polyus Gold, listed by Forbes at No. 32, has an estimated wealth of $18.0 billion, nearly $5 billion more than a year ago.

The ranks of Russia's billionaires swelled by 31, second only to China, reaching beyond the metals and energy businesses that have traditionally helped some of their peers achieve billionaire status.

Yuri Milner, who started the DST Internet investment company and is featured in Forbes' cover story as "The Billionaire Who Friended The Web," placed 1,140 on the list.

The full Forbes ranking of the world's billionaires can be seen at www.forbes.com/billionaires .

(Writing by Lidia Kelly)

[TsarSamuil]

Erdinger, here you go, you dickhead!

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'No evidence of abuse of process' in Khodorkovsky case.

MOSCOW, June 14 (RIA Novosti)

There is no evidence of any abuse of process in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and his business partner Platon Lebedev, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said on Tuesday.

His comments came after Natalya Vasilyeva, a former court aide, was questioned earlier in the day at the request of Khodorkovsky's defense team.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have been in prison since 2003 and were convicted on a second set of charges in December, extending their term to 2016.

In February, Vasilyeva said that the verdict on Khodorkovsky was imposed on Judge Viktor Danilkin by his superiors at the Moscow City Court. Danilkin denied the accusation.

Markin said Vasilyeva's allegations were "only based on assumptions and guesswork and not substantiated by any objective facts."

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have always maintained that the charges against them have been trumped up.

The Russian government has always denied there was any political motive for Khodorkovsky's prosecution and has defended the validity of the legal process in the affair.

[TsarSamuil]

Man acquitted of Russia Forbes editor murder 'survives murder attempt'

15:42 05/08/2011
MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti)

A Russian man cleared of the murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov has himself survived a murder attempt in Moscow, police sources say.

Fail Sadretdinov, acquitted by a Moscow court of organizing the gang alleged to have killed Klebnikov in July 2004, was unhurt after a hitman shot at his car as he was returning home on Thursday night.

"[Sadretdinov] let his chauffeur go near his home and sat behind the wheel himself. When he was passing a gate, an unidentified man opened fire on the place in the car where Sadretdinov was supposed to be sitting and then fled," police sources told RIA Novosti.

Sadretdinov was recently released from prison after serving more than four years for fraud.

Klebnikov was the head of the Moscow branch of Forbes magazine. His death caused international outcry amid speculation that it could have been linked to his investigations into corruption among Russia's powerful elite.

[TsarSamuil]

Vid,
rt.com/news/businessman-pugachev-uk-financial/

Russian banker steals billions and runs for London.

RT.com
13 August, 2011, 10:34

The case of a former Russian senator, whose bank owes the state more than $1 billion, has grown into one of the biggest financial scandals in Russian history, exposing drastic drawbacks in the country's banking regulations.

Russian businessmen making it onto the UK's rich list have become a common thing – just as Russian investigators, in turn, take an interest in their affairs.

Sergey Pugachev has everything: a fortune in several banks, a couple of private jets and numerous properties – from the Cote d’Azur to London.

Married to a Russo-British socialite, he was a guest at Prince Albert’s recent royal wedding in Monaco. Among the top ten richest people in the UK according to last year’s Sunday Times newspaper, Pugachev leads a life many would envy. He even made his wife a star of a TV advertising campaign in France for the grand French food store Hediard, which he owns.

However, all that is hardly a consolation at home – in Russia – where he owes billions of rubles to his bank’s creditors.

“As a result of misconduct and violations by the management and founders of Mezhprombank its creditors suffered damages totaling more than US$1 billion,” reported Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin.

Last year the International Industrial Bank known in Russian as Mezhprombank was the first private bank to default on euro bonds in more than 10 years.

It received a more-than-$1 billion loan from the Russian state as part of the anti-crisis support program. But the state has not been returned the money – nor have all the creditors been paid off.

“It was Mr Pugachev’s pocket bank that catered for his various businesses. In the wake of its license being revoked, it practically halted its operations and focused on transferring the assets through credits to shell companies that moved it on and on. And in the end the money most probably ended up in the structures affiliated with the owner of the bank,” explained the general director of Russia’s Deposit Insurance Agency, Aleksandr Tourbanov.

The bank’s database was deliberately erased and investigators say the bankruptcy was intentional. It is the largest bankruptcy case of a financial institution in Russia’s modern history. Along with the bank, the rest of Pugachev’s business empire seems to have dissolved into other offshore assets.

A similar scandal broke out with the Bank of Moscow, Russia's fifth-largest bank. The review revealed a gaping hole in the books, with bad loans totaling $9 billion, or nearly a third of its assets. The former head of the bank is also hiding in London.

The bankruptcy of Mezhprombank last year and the recent downfall of the Bank of Moscow, reveal that the country is in desperate need of stronger banking supervision. And while those responsible for the damage enjoy their lives outside Russia, it is the state and its people that have to carry the burden of their losses.

[TsarSamuil]

Infographic,
en.rian.ru/images/16585/98/165859875.jpg

Mikhail Prokhorov's business assets.

[TsarSamuil]

Politkovskaya Murder Ordered by Berezovsky 'for Putin's Birthday' -Report.

Novinite.com
World | September 16, 2011, Friday| 471 views

Russian tycoon in exile Boris Berezovsky may have ordered the notorious 2006 assassination of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a suspect has hinted.

The suspect, former police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov. described in detail the preparation of the attack and suggested that it could have been ordered by Berezovsky, Kommersant reports.

Lom-Ali Gaytukaev, a Chechen citizen believed to have masterminded the assassination, has insisted that it should be preferably carried out on Vladimir Putin's birthday, Pavlyuchenkov has also claimed.

Once a supporter of Vladimir Putin, Berezovsky clashed with him after his election as President in 2000 and remains a vocal critic.

Anna Politkovskaya, journalist from Novaya Gazeta, was shot dead in Moscow on October 7, 2006.

In 2008, it was reported that Politkovskaya's murder might have been ordered by a politician inside Russia. Murad Musayev, a lawyer for the three suspects, told journalists that the case notes, as one of the interpretations of the crime, mentioned that a politician, based in Russia (but not named in those notes), was behind her death.

[TsarSamuil]

European court delivers mixed ruling on Yukos.

20:45 20/09/2011
MOSCOW, September 20 (RIA Novosti)

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that the Russian authorities had violated the rights of the now-defunct Yukos company, but rejected claims that the break-up of the oil giant was politically motivated.

The split decision was welcomed by both sides.

The court also deferred consideration of a Yukos claim for $98 billion in compensation, giving the parties three months to reach an out-of-court settlement. The claim was the biggest ever filed at the court.

Politics or white-collar crime?

Lawyers for Yukos, which once pumped out more oil than both Libya and Qatar, had said that the company was hounded out of business after its owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky - then Russia’s richest man - began funding the Russian opposition. The Kremlin has consistently denied the allegation.

Yukos first became the subject of tax proceedings in 2002, when tax authorities accused it of setting up shell companies to hide earnings. It was declared insolvent in 2006 and was liquidated the following year. Its vast assets were acquired by the state-run Rosneft oil company.

Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 on tax evasion charges and sentenced to eight years in 2005. His sentence was extended in a second trial on separate charges earlier this year and he is now due for release in 2016. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was president at the time of the break-up of Yukos, said “a thief belongs in jail” before the start of Khodorkovsky’s second trial.

The ruling

In its ruling on Tuesday, the court said the Russian authorities had carried out "legitimate actions... to counter the company's tax evasion”.

The judges also ruled that "There was no violation of Article 14 [prohibition of discrimination]… concerning whether Yukos was treated differently from other companies.”

But it also ruled that Russian officials had failed to give the company enough time to prepare its defense and had violated the company’s property rights.

The court also said its ruling was not final and was open to appeal.

Russian authorities’ reaction

Mikhail Barshchevsky, the Kremlin representative at Russian high courts, said the court’s dismissal of the political motivation allegations was an "indisputable victory".

“The European Court of Human Rights conclusion that there is no political subtext in the Yukos case is an unquestionable victory for Russia’s representatives in the court,” he said.

Russia’s Justice Ministry also hailed the decision, saying in a statement that the court had acknowledged that Yukos “had a complicated plan for minimizing their taxes, which envisaged fraudulent use of numerous front companies, registered in Russian tax havens.”

"The charges of selective and individual persecution have not been confirmed," the Justice Ministry added.

Yukos reaction

Khodorkovsky’s lawyers welcomed the court’s “findings that the Russian government violated the right to a fair trial and property rights while handling the Yukos case.”

Yukos's former chief financial officer, Bruce Misamore, also claimed victory.

"The European Court of Human Rights confirmed that the Russian tax proceedings were unfair, finding that the limited period given to Yukos to have access to the case material was ridiculously short, however many lawyers Yukos might have been able to deploy," he said in an online press conference.

"The points of our filing that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of are very, very significant,” he added. “The court has vindicated Yukos' position.”

Steven Theede, former chief executive officer of Yukos Oil Company said the court found “the crux of the case was the speed with which the Russian authorities demanded that Yukos pay the taxes, despite the fact its assets were frozen, and the decision to choose to 'auction' OAO Yuganskneftegaz, its main production unit, to meet the asserted liabilities.”

In Russia

Reaction to the ruling was mixed within Russia.

Nikolai Kovalyov, a member of the ruling United Russia party and a former Federal Security Service (FSB) director, said Yukos had committed a crime, and disagreed with the court’s ruling that the company’s right to a fair trial had been violated.

“Here in fact is an element of politicization - pick on Russia any which way,” he said.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights body, told RIA Novosti she hoped the second court ruling would be "in Yukos’ favor."

"To me, it's evident the case was politically motivated. Yukos paid its taxes honestly," she said.

State Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachyov said cases “should be legally perfect and watertight” or they ran the risk of speculation about a “political subtext, which is precisely what happened in the Yukos case.”

[TsarSamuil]

German investigators discover Khodorkovsky's 15 mln euro Swiss bank account.

09:03 15/10/2011
MOSCOW, October 15 (RIA Novosti)

German investigators have accidentally come across bank accounts owned by jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and members of his family during a raid at the Munster office of Swiss bank Julius Baer, a German newspaper reported on Saturday.

According to Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the data check at the bank was carried out to identify clients evading taxes. Khodorkovsky’s Julius Baer accounts contained over 15 million euros.

A criminal case against Khodorkovsky on money laundering was initiated in Germany several months ago, however the paper did not mention whether the probe was still under way.

In late 2010 Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil company, and his business partner Platon Lebedev were sentenced to 14 years each for oil embezzlement and money laundering. The term included the seven years they had already served, mostly in Chita in eastern Siberia. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were initially told they would have to stay in jail until 2017 but on May 24 the Moscow City Court ruled that jailed former businessmen would be set free in 2016 after the court cut their total sentence from 14 to 13 years each.