98G
12-27-2010, 20:00
Russian oil tycoon Khodorkovsky convicted (again)
Washington Post, Catherine Belton and Isabel Gorst
Monday, December 27, 2010; 4:18 PM
MOSCOW - A Russian judge has convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Yukos oil tycoon, and his former business partner, Platon Lebedev, of embezzlement and money laundering in a politically charged trial that has provoked condemnation from the United States.
Reading the verdict on Monday, Viktor Danilkin, the judge, told a packed courtroom that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had "embezzled property belonging to others by using their official positions." The verdict could keep the Kremlin foes in jail for six more years.
...
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, is accused of stealing $27 billion of oil, or all of the commodity his company produced between 1998 and 2000, and all the oil it exported between 2000 and 2003, and then laundering the proceeds.
Even critics of Khodorkovsky, who amassed vast wealth in the chaos of the 1990s but then transformed himself from corporate governance pariah to investor darling, say the charges that he stole such quantities of oil are absurd.
The new charges come on top of the eight-year sentence Khodorkovsky and Lebedev received in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion in a seven-year legal onslaught that has defined the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the country's president-turned-prime minister.
Khodorkovsky's arrest in 2003 marked a turning point in Putin's presidency that led to the stifling of political opposition and the state takeover of the economy's commanding heights.
Investors said the conviction presented a lost opportunity for the Kremlin as it seeks to convince business that it is improving its investment climate.
Public opinion in Russia has changed since Khodorkovsky's arrest in 2003, said Gennady Gudkov, deputy head of the security committee in the Russian parliament and a key member of the country's establishment.
Then, Khodorkovsky's case was seen by many in the country as an indictment on the chaotic 1990s when a handful of oligarchs had won valuable state assets for a song and then attempted to deploy their wealth to influence policy in their own favor. Things are different now. "People have begun to feel sorry for Khodorkovsky. It is exactly the opposite of what they felt 10 years ago," Gudkov said.
Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said human rights groups were now comparing Khodorkovsky to Soviet-era dissidents such as the nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov or novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
"I'm very wary about making comparisons with these sorts of people, who fought for freedom," said Rahr. "Khodorkovsky fought only for his business."- Financial Times
Here is the AP article summarizing Putin's TV interview predicting (or dictating) the outcome before the verdict was announced.
Russia's Putin: Khodorkovsky 'should sit in jail'
By LYNN BERRY
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 16, 2010; 12:35 PM
MOSCOW -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared Thursday that former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a proven criminal and "should sit in jail," a statement denounced as interference in the trial of a Kremlin foe whose case has come to symbolize the excesses of Putin's rule.
...
Putin was in his first term as president when Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man, was arrested in 2003 after funding opposition parties in parliament and challenging Kremlin policies.
Khodorkovsky's lawyers and supporters said Putin's comments during his annual televised call-in show would put undue pressure on the judge as he deliberates and exposed Putin's role as a driving force behind the seven-year legal onslaught.
...
In addition to saying Khodorkovsky was guilty of economic crimes, Putin once again suggested the former oligarch had ordered the killings of people who stood in his way as he turned Yukos into Russia's largest oil company. Khodorkovsky, whose oil company was taken over by the state, has not been charged with any violent crime.
Putin reminded television viewers that the former Yukos security chief was convicted of involvement in several killings.
"What? Did the security service chief commit all these crimes on his own, at his own discretion?" he said.
Putin said Khodorkovsky's present punishment was "more liberal" than the 150-year prison sentence handed down in the U.S. to disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, who cheated thousands of investors with losses estimated at around $20 billion.
"Everything looks much more liberal here," Putin said. "Nevertheless, we should presume that Mr. Khodorkovsky's crimes have been proven."
...
The case has been seen as a test for President Dmitry Medvedev, who has promised to establish independent courts and strengthen the rule of law in Russia.
Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report.
98G Editorial Note: Issues with Russia have tipped left us without a comprehensive strategy since the Reagan and Bush Sr. era – partially due to a lack of policy and partially due to Russia’s internal economic struggles which allow for easier compromise on civil rights for Russian citizens trying to survive the transition from a failed economic system. It would be great if this could stay a Russian Area Studies string as the previous 5 years of the Bush administrations used almost identical language as the current administration. We seem to have lost the opportunity for a Russian policy when the Soviet Union imploded and Yeltsin had a tentative control of a fledgling Russian democracy. The question is where we go from here.
Here is the original sentencing report from 2005.
New York Sun
Khodorkovsky Gets 9-Year Sentence
By MICHAEL MAINVILLE, Special to the Sun | June 1, 2005
MOSCOW - Bringing an end to the most closely watched and politically charged criminal trial in Russia's post-Soviet history, a Moscow court yesterday sentenced former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky to nine years in prison and ordered him to pay vast sums in taxes and fines.
During a Washington press conference, President Bush expressed some concern over the handling of the case.
The court found Mr. Khodorkovsky, 41, guilty of six of seven charges of fraud and tax evasion. The sentence, one year short of the maximum demanded by prosecutors, will be reduced by the 583 days he has already spent in jail since being snatched from his private jet by special forces in October 2003.
The verdict had long been seen as a foregone conclusion, with critics charging that the Kremlin orchestrated the case in order to destroy one of President Putin's political rivals and seize control of Mr. Khodorkovsky's oil firm, Yukos.
...
Mr. Khodorkovsky's co-defendant and business associate, Platon Lebedev, was found guilty of the same charges and given the same sentence.
The two men were also ordered to pay more than $614 million in taxes and penalties owed by companies with which they were involved. Mr. Khodorkovsky was additionally ordered to pay $42.5 million in income taxes and Mr. Lebedev to pay $581,000.
...
It took the court a record 12 days to read out the verdict in the 11-month trial - a delay the defense said was a ploy designed to sap interest in the case.
Mr. Khodorkovsky's mother, Marina, said the verdict was certain in country ruled by Mr. Putin, a Soviet-era KGB agent.
"We lost our son on the day when Putin came to power," she said. "We are old people, and we know from our own experience who they are, these KGB people."
The trial has raised alarm in the West about the decline of democracy in Russia and the high risk of doing business there. Throughout the trial, Mr. Khodorkovsky watched from behind bars as the government crushed Yukos - once Russia's largest oil firm and most profitable company - under the weight of enormous back-tax claims. State firms eventually snapped up Yukos's core assets in auctions widely criticized as Kremlin-rigged.
Yukos announced shortly after the verdict that it had filed a court challenge seeking $11.6 billion in damages from the Russian government.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, Mr. Bush said yesterday that he had personally "expressed my concerns about the case" with Mr. Putin.
"As I explained to him, here you're innocent until proven guilty, and it appeared to us - at least people in my administration - that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to [having] a fair trial," Mr. Bush said. He said America is "watching the ongoing case" and now wants to see "how the appeal will be handled."
Western sympathy for Mr. Khodorkovsky, whose fortune was once estimated at $15 billion, is hardly echoed among ordinary Russians, most of whom view Russia's wealthy oligarchs as robber barons. Mr. Khodorkovsky was among the handful of well-connected businessmen who seized control of vast swathes of the Russian economy in the 1990s under dubious privatization schemes that left millions of Russians penniless.
The last paragraph from 2005 is pretty accurate from my 6 years there. Khordorkovsky is an interesting barometer for Russia today. Russians have trouble identifying with him as a dissident but more of a tax evader and potential embezzler. They may not trust the government but they also mistrust the wealthy – especially the oligarchs. It may take a while, but getting Russia to be an ally would certainly help us in the Middle East and further isolate North Korea. The question is how to get them there from here.
Merry Christmas, Richard!
Washington Post, Catherine Belton and Isabel Gorst
Monday, December 27, 2010; 4:18 PM
MOSCOW - A Russian judge has convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Yukos oil tycoon, and his former business partner, Platon Lebedev, of embezzlement and money laundering in a politically charged trial that has provoked condemnation from the United States.
Reading the verdict on Monday, Viktor Danilkin, the judge, told a packed courtroom that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had "embezzled property belonging to others by using their official positions." The verdict could keep the Kremlin foes in jail for six more years.
...
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, is accused of stealing $27 billion of oil, or all of the commodity his company produced between 1998 and 2000, and all the oil it exported between 2000 and 2003, and then laundering the proceeds.
Even critics of Khodorkovsky, who amassed vast wealth in the chaos of the 1990s but then transformed himself from corporate governance pariah to investor darling, say the charges that he stole such quantities of oil are absurd.
The new charges come on top of the eight-year sentence Khodorkovsky and Lebedev received in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion in a seven-year legal onslaught that has defined the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the country's president-turned-prime minister.
Khodorkovsky's arrest in 2003 marked a turning point in Putin's presidency that led to the stifling of political opposition and the state takeover of the economy's commanding heights.
Investors said the conviction presented a lost opportunity for the Kremlin as it seeks to convince business that it is improving its investment climate.
Public opinion in Russia has changed since Khodorkovsky's arrest in 2003, said Gennady Gudkov, deputy head of the security committee in the Russian parliament and a key member of the country's establishment.
Then, Khodorkovsky's case was seen by many in the country as an indictment on the chaotic 1990s when a handful of oligarchs had won valuable state assets for a song and then attempted to deploy their wealth to influence policy in their own favor. Things are different now. "People have begun to feel sorry for Khodorkovsky. It is exactly the opposite of what they felt 10 years ago," Gudkov said.
Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said human rights groups were now comparing Khodorkovsky to Soviet-era dissidents such as the nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov or novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
"I'm very wary about making comparisons with these sorts of people, who fought for freedom," said Rahr. "Khodorkovsky fought only for his business."- Financial Times
Here is the AP article summarizing Putin's TV interview predicting (or dictating) the outcome before the verdict was announced.
Russia's Putin: Khodorkovsky 'should sit in jail'
By LYNN BERRY
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 16, 2010; 12:35 PM
MOSCOW -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared Thursday that former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a proven criminal and "should sit in jail," a statement denounced as interference in the trial of a Kremlin foe whose case has come to symbolize the excesses of Putin's rule.
...
Putin was in his first term as president when Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man, was arrested in 2003 after funding opposition parties in parliament and challenging Kremlin policies.
Khodorkovsky's lawyers and supporters said Putin's comments during his annual televised call-in show would put undue pressure on the judge as he deliberates and exposed Putin's role as a driving force behind the seven-year legal onslaught.
...
In addition to saying Khodorkovsky was guilty of economic crimes, Putin once again suggested the former oligarch had ordered the killings of people who stood in his way as he turned Yukos into Russia's largest oil company. Khodorkovsky, whose oil company was taken over by the state, has not been charged with any violent crime.
Putin reminded television viewers that the former Yukos security chief was convicted of involvement in several killings.
"What? Did the security service chief commit all these crimes on his own, at his own discretion?" he said.
Putin said Khodorkovsky's present punishment was "more liberal" than the 150-year prison sentence handed down in the U.S. to disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, who cheated thousands of investors with losses estimated at around $20 billion.
"Everything looks much more liberal here," Putin said. "Nevertheless, we should presume that Mr. Khodorkovsky's crimes have been proven."
...
The case has been seen as a test for President Dmitry Medvedev, who has promised to establish independent courts and strengthen the rule of law in Russia.
Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report.
98G Editorial Note: Issues with Russia have tipped left us without a comprehensive strategy since the Reagan and Bush Sr. era – partially due to a lack of policy and partially due to Russia’s internal economic struggles which allow for easier compromise on civil rights for Russian citizens trying to survive the transition from a failed economic system. It would be great if this could stay a Russian Area Studies string as the previous 5 years of the Bush administrations used almost identical language as the current administration. We seem to have lost the opportunity for a Russian policy when the Soviet Union imploded and Yeltsin had a tentative control of a fledgling Russian democracy. The question is where we go from here.
Here is the original sentencing report from 2005.
New York Sun
Khodorkovsky Gets 9-Year Sentence
By MICHAEL MAINVILLE, Special to the Sun | June 1, 2005
MOSCOW - Bringing an end to the most closely watched and politically charged criminal trial in Russia's post-Soviet history, a Moscow court yesterday sentenced former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky to nine years in prison and ordered him to pay vast sums in taxes and fines.
During a Washington press conference, President Bush expressed some concern over the handling of the case.
The court found Mr. Khodorkovsky, 41, guilty of six of seven charges of fraud and tax evasion. The sentence, one year short of the maximum demanded by prosecutors, will be reduced by the 583 days he has already spent in jail since being snatched from his private jet by special forces in October 2003.
The verdict had long been seen as a foregone conclusion, with critics charging that the Kremlin orchestrated the case in order to destroy one of President Putin's political rivals and seize control of Mr. Khodorkovsky's oil firm, Yukos.
...
Mr. Khodorkovsky's co-defendant and business associate, Platon Lebedev, was found guilty of the same charges and given the same sentence.
The two men were also ordered to pay more than $614 million in taxes and penalties owed by companies with which they were involved. Mr. Khodorkovsky was additionally ordered to pay $42.5 million in income taxes and Mr. Lebedev to pay $581,000.
...
It took the court a record 12 days to read out the verdict in the 11-month trial - a delay the defense said was a ploy designed to sap interest in the case.
Mr. Khodorkovsky's mother, Marina, said the verdict was certain in country ruled by Mr. Putin, a Soviet-era KGB agent.
"We lost our son on the day when Putin came to power," she said. "We are old people, and we know from our own experience who they are, these KGB people."
The trial has raised alarm in the West about the decline of democracy in Russia and the high risk of doing business there. Throughout the trial, Mr. Khodorkovsky watched from behind bars as the government crushed Yukos - once Russia's largest oil firm and most profitable company - under the weight of enormous back-tax claims. State firms eventually snapped up Yukos's core assets in auctions widely criticized as Kremlin-rigged.
Yukos announced shortly after the verdict that it had filed a court challenge seeking $11.6 billion in damages from the Russian government.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, Mr. Bush said yesterday that he had personally "expressed my concerns about the case" with Mr. Putin.
"As I explained to him, here you're innocent until proven guilty, and it appeared to us - at least people in my administration - that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to [having] a fair trial," Mr. Bush said. He said America is "watching the ongoing case" and now wants to see "how the appeal will be handled."
Western sympathy for Mr. Khodorkovsky, whose fortune was once estimated at $15 billion, is hardly echoed among ordinary Russians, most of whom view Russia's wealthy oligarchs as robber barons. Mr. Khodorkovsky was among the handful of well-connected businessmen who seized control of vast swathes of the Russian economy in the 1990s under dubious privatization schemes that left millions of Russians penniless.
The last paragraph from 2005 is pretty accurate from my 6 years there. Khordorkovsky is an interesting barometer for Russia today. Russians have trouble identifying with him as a dissident but more of a tax evader and potential embezzler. They may not trust the government but they also mistrust the wealthy – especially the oligarchs. It may take a while, but getting Russia to be an ally would certainly help us in the Middle East and further isolate North Korea. The question is how to get them there from here.
Merry Christmas, Richard!