Chairman of ZAO MFO Menatep and YUKOS co-owner Platon Lebedev (on the left) getting into a car after the hearing of the criminal case in Basmanny City Court. Lebedev has been charged with embezzlement of OAO Apatite share holding
Photo: Valery Melnikov
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Stand Up! The Jury is Carrying
// À 160-Volume Case of Platon Lebedev has been Heard in Meshchansky Court
The YUKOS Affair
Yesterday, the Meshchansky District Court began a preliminary hearing in the case of Platon Lebedev, the head of MFO MENATEP. The hearing must determine whether there are for returning the case to the Prosecutor General's Office for revision. Meanwhile, Mr. Lebedev's lawyers have suffered their first defeat: the court refused to release him from custody, and he will probably not be let out before the verdict.
Platon Lebedev, the president of MFO MENATEP and a co-owner of YUKOS, was called in for questioning at the prosecutor's office on July 2, 2003, in the matter of misappropriation of funds during the sale in 1994 of 20% of the shares of AO Apatit. He was arrested the same day on charges of fraud, causing damage to property by fraud, and failure to execute a court decision. A charge of corporate tax evasion was later added to this list. The investigation was concluded on August 22, and the accused began familiarizing himself with the case materials. In February 2004, he was charged under two articles: “Appropriation or embezzlement” and “Tax evasion by a citizen”. On March 26, the Prosecutor General's Office approved the bill of indictment in Lebedev's case and sent it to court.
Yesterday, Platon Lebedev was taken to the Meshchansky Court on Kalanchevskaya Street, where his case will be heard. Judge Irina Kolesnikova began the so-called preliminary hearing of the case, which by law is held in closed session and at which the parties are required to settle important procedural questions, including the measure of restriction on the accused and the possible return of the case to the prosecutor's office (under the Code of Criminal Procedure, a case may be returned to the prosecutor's office for five days if the court has established that the investigation made errors in drawing up the bill of indictment).
Mr. Lebedev's defence lawyers immediately filed an application for his release from custody. They called the judge's attention to the fact that the Basmanny court had extended their client's period of detention only until March 30, and after that date, Platon Lebedev would be held in prison without a court order, which in the lawyers' opinion was illegal. However, Judge Kolesnikov immediately remedied this defect by making her own decision that the defendant would be held in custody for at least another two months. She thus agreed with federal prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin (known for his part in the cases of YUKOS co-owner Vasily Shakhnovsky and the murder of State Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov), who contended that if the accused were freed, he might put pressure on the witnesses, many of whom were his subordinates, or hide out abroad. This was the first serious defeat for the defence, since according to existing judicial practice, if the measure of restriction on the defendant is not changed in the first session, he must remain in prison at least until the verdict.
Then Mr. Lebedev filed an application in court to return the case to the Prosecutor General's Office on the grounds that two of his lawyers, Anton Drel and Timofei Grindnev, had not had time to familiarize themselves with the case materials, which the accused considered a violation of his right of defence. In addition, immediately after the conclusion of the investigation, two more of Mr. Lebedev's lawyers, Tatyana Simonova and Genndy Sharov, entered the case, and since they were completely unfamiliar with the 160 case volumes they also needed time to study them.
The judge retired to make a decision on the accused's application, after promising to announce it today. A source in the Prosecutor General's Office told Kommersant that, “the defence's tactics are already clearto use any possible means to delay the start of the proceedings until the case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky comes up before the court”. Then the lawyers will have the opportunity to ask the court to combine the two cases. However, the prosecutor's office is opposed to this, because it does not want to allow Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to sit in the same cage, travel to court in the same car, or have the opportunity to coordinate their testimonies.
Meanwhile, Elena Liptser, one of Mr. Lebedev's defence lawyers, told journalists yesterday that the European Court of Human Rights would be considering an appeal filed by his lawyers “in order of priority”. However, it is well known that the Strasbourg court has no deadlines for the consideration of appeals, so they are generally delayed for years. The prosecutor's office is calculating that sentence will be pronounced on Platon Lebedev no later than this fall.
Ekaterina Zapodinskaya
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 16, 2004
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