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Boris Berezovsky Tried in Absentia
The Savelovsky Court in Moscow began hearing the case of the embezzlement of 214 million rubles from OAO Aeroflot yesterday. The lone defendant in the case is political emigrant Boris Berezovsky, who is being represented by court-appointed lawyer Alexander Dudkin. Dudkin was appointed after Berezovsky forbade his official representatives to respond to the case. At the first session, the charges against Berezovsky were read. They were almost word-for-word the same as in a case the court heard earlier.
According to the prosecution, Aeroflot's receipts for 1996-1997, $252 million, was turned over to the Swiss firm Andava, which was co-owned by former first deputy general director of Aeroflot Nikolay Glushkov and Berezovsky. Glushkov received a two-year suspended sentence for fraud in 2006. According to the prosecution, part of the money in question was used by Andava subsidiaries FOK and Grendgland in deals that left Aeroflot in debts at high interest rates. That interest and the fines on it amount to 214.9 million rubles, which the prosecutor considers embezzled.
The charges against Berezovsky, embezzlement and money laundering (for buying real estate and cars with part of the money) carry a maximum sentence of ten years in prison. “My attitude toward the charges is extremely negative,” stated Dudkin. He intends to petition to call 14 witnesses in the case. Some of those witnesses live abroad.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 06, 2007
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