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YUKOS Investigation Takes Three Days
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has completed a three-day preliminary investigation of the case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, who are accused of embezzling oil and money laundering. The defense does not expect this latest case to reach the courts for several months, since the defendants will examine the material in the case at a leisurely the pace, and the investigators will not rush them, since they expect a political decision in the case in the meantime.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were accused last Monday of stealing more than 349 million tons of oil from YUKOS subsidiaries and laundering $7.5 billion and given the protocol on the completion of the preliminary investigation to read yesterday. Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant stated that his client asked at that time about the progress of his petition to have the YUKOS consolidated accounts for 1998-2003 added to the case material, since he thinks it will show that the company’s profits were not embezzled, but spent “on capital investments, acquisition of assets and payment of dividends, in accordance with the decisions of the YUKOS board of directors.”
Lebedev is petitioning for the removal of Valery Alyshev as head of the investigative group, claiming that Alyshev has violated article 299 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Knowingly Pressing Criminal Charges against an Innocent Person”). The defendants were informed that decisions on their petitions would be faxed from Moscow in the near future and the defendants will continue examining material from the case next week after representatives of the claimants, former YUKOS subsidiaries Yuganskneftegaz, Samraneftegaz and Tomskneft, sign protocols on the completion of their examination of the material. The defense says that new material may be added to the case, especially testimony from former YUKOS managers. Khodorkovsky lawyer Yury Shmidt said that about 17 volumes of material from earlier cases have been added to this case.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 03, 2008
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