Khodorkovsky Trial - 05.31.2005

JTA: Sentencing seen as a way to keep Putin in power


Jerusalem Post: Khodorkovsky decision 'alarming'
Jerusalem Post: Editorial: Putin's trials
Jerusalem Post: Analysis: Bad for everyone, not just the Jews


NY Times: Tycoon Is Convicted and Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

JTA - 06.01.2005

Sentencing of Russian Jewish tycoon seen as a way to keep Putin in power

By Lev Krichevsky

MOSCOW (JTA) -- Russian Jewish officials believe oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was sentenced this week to nine years in prison, was not targeted because of his Jewish origin -- but many believe the trial did lead to a rise in anti-Semitic sentiment in Russia. 

A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced Khodorkovsky, former head of the Yukos oil company, after finding him guilty of six charges out of seven he faced, including tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement. 

Khodorkovsky's business partner, Platon Lebedev, also was jailed for nine years on the same charges. A third defendant, Andrei Krainov, was given a suspended sentence of five-and-a-half years. Lebedev and Krainov are not Jewish. 

"This was to be expected," Tankred Golenpolsky, founder of the International Jewish Gazette, Russia's oldest Jewish weekly, said minutes after the sentence was made public. 

"It was clear from the very beginning that Khodorkovsky won't be free before 2008," Golenpolsky said, referring to Russia's next presidential election and echoing a common view that the Kremlin orchestrated the trial to curtail Khodorkovsky's political ambitions. "Once he is free he will be the only and the strongest alternative" to President Vladimir Putin. 

Khodorkovsky has been in prison since October 2003. He has 10 days to appeal the sentence, and plans to do so. 

Meanwhile, the Prosecutor General's Office said Tuesday that it would file new charges against Khodorkovsky and his partners. 

Another leading Russian Jewish figure said the trial had little to do with the rule of law. 

"This sentence has put this case in a line of other high-profile, politically tinged criminal cases in the history of Russia," said Mikhail Chlenov, secretary-general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress. 

Chlenov said the Kremlin saw the case as putting an end to an early era of Russian capitalism associated with former President Boris Yeltsin, during which many Jewish business tycoons got rich when formerly state-owned businesses were privatized. 

Khodorkovsky's sentencing sends a clear message to influential Russian business leaders, some of whom may have wanted to compete for power with Putin, Golenpolsky said. 

The prosecutors demanded that Khodorkovsky receive 10 years. Khodorkovsky's defense said the verdict in large parts repeated prosecutors' conclusion in the case, almost word-for-word. 

Khodorkovsky, 41 and the father of four children, has a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. Before his arrest in 2003, Khodorkovsky had mentioned privately to Jewish leaders on several occasions that he did not consider himself Jewish. 

Though he was a prominent philanthropist interested in education and civil rights, he never contributed to Jewish causes. 

Jewish leaders emphasized that the case wasn't motivated by anti-Semitism, but believe many Russians based their attitude toward Khodorkovsky on his ethnic origin. 

"Regardless of what Khodorkovsky himself felt about his Jewishness, any anti-Semite would readily list him as a Jew," Chlenov said. "This has a certain impact on the way many Russian Jews feel today." 

A spokesman for Russia's largest Jewish organization agreed. 

"This case has already led to a rise of anti-Semitic moods in some circles of society," said Boruch Gorin of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, referring to some Russians -- mainly from the older generation or from low-income households -- who feel animosity toward the wealthy. 

Some Jews, especially former top Yukos shareholders now living in Israel, exploited Jews' insecurities by describing the case as anti-Semitic, Gorin said. 

Three of Yukos' top shareholders fled to Israel shortly after Khodorkovsky's arrest. One of them, Leonid Nevzlin, former president of the Russian Jewish Congress and the best-known member of the Yukos team after Khodorkovsky, has said the Kremlin went after Yukos in part because of anti-Semitism among prominent members of the Putin administration. 

Many Russian Jews took special interest in the case because of Khodorkovsky's Jewish roots. But they weren't alone: Many non-Jewish Russians saw the sentence as a comment on the regime's lack of respect for democratic freedoms and the rule of law. 

"I certainly feel an extra sympathy for Khodorkovsky because of his Jewish background," said Irina Miller, a Jewish legal assistant at a Moscow law firm. "But I know a lot more non-Jews who likewise feel this is a grand injustice being done before our eyes."


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Jerusalem Post - 06.02.2005

Jerusalem Post

Putin's trials

Editorial

The conviction of Russian-Jewish businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his sentence to nine years imprisonment by a Moscow court Tuesday has rightly given the world another reason for increasing concern about the acts and intentions of President Vladimir Putin. 

Regardless of whether Khodorkovsky is truly guilty of the fraud and tax evasion charges lodged against him for his stewardship of the huge Yukos oil company, the circumstances of his arrest by themselves raise serious questions about the integrity of the Russian judicial system. In the early years of the wide-open post-Soviet economy, financial shenanigans of the kind of which he was accused were more the norm than the exception. Khodorkovsky appears to have been singled out for prosecution only after emerging as a political opponent to Putin. 

The nearly two years he has spent behind bars since his arrest are practically unheard of in any democratic society for white-collar criminal defendants, the "show-trial" aspects of the proceedings against him, and the subsequent dismantling of Yukos and the absorption of key elements of the business by government-controlled companies, all give the appearance of political motivations to the state's prosecution of him. 

"No doubt this sentence is selective punishment for political reasons," Natan Sharansky told The Jerusalem Post. "It's very alarming for everybody like me who knows well the changes in Russia and wants to see Russia moving toward more freedom and democracy." 

Although Sharansky also noted that Khodorkovsky's trial "wasn't a desire to punish him for his Jewishness but for his political ambition," he rightly added that "of course his Jewishness can help for propaganda, for making it more acceptable to the people." 

As worrying as the threat of rising anti-Semitism in Russia may be, it pales in comparison to the real danger highlighted by this trial: the increasing, even accelerating efforts by the Putin government to turn back the democratic gains made in Russian since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rest of the world's inability so far to effectively pressure the Kremlin to halt this slide into authoritarianism. 

Indicative of this trend has been the persecution and suppression of independent media outlets; selective arrests of Putin's political opponents, alongside suspicious violent (and even fatal) attacks on some of them; Putin's move to dissolve the system of independently elected regional governors, and his blatant interference in the election of neighboring Ukraine. 

Since in Russia authoritarianism has historically moved hand-in-hand with anti-Semitism, all of Russian Jewry, not just the handful of Jewish oligarchs, has reason to be concerned by these events. And since dictatorial nations always make natural allies, Israel too has reason to worry, despite such goodwill gestures as Putin's recent visit here. Much more relevant and problematic is the Kremlin's willingness to step up arms sales to such states as Iran and Syria. 

But this is a problem for the whole world to be concerned about, and the responsibility for dealing with it rests primarily with the major democratic powers of the US and Europe. Make no mistake, the Khodorkovsky conviction by itself will generate its own punishment for Russia in the chill it will send through the international business community, and a likely subsequent reluctance by that community to invest in a country where the markets no longer look truly free and fair. 

But that is not enough. Nor is the admirable rhetoric employed by US President George W. Bush last month in his visits to the Baltic States and Georgia, where he lauded and offered reassurances for their freedom and independence from Russian domination. 

Bush was right, though, that given the West's limited ability to effect internal reform and democratization in Russia, the best way to curtail Putin's ambitions is to do just that in its neighboring countries, bringing them into the Western sphere of influence. This will require more than words. Steps should be taken to bring such states as Ukraine into concrete arrangements with NATO and the European Union, as well as turning away from alliances with those governments in the region – such as that of Uzbekistan – which are acting more in tune with Putin's heavy-handed methods of governance. 

When the Russian people increasingly see the benefits of free societies and free markets in the surrounding states, the calls for reform and not repression from the Kremlin will grow louder. That is the best way to ensure that everyone in Russia – including Mikhail Khodorkovsky – gets the fair trial they deserve.


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Jerusalem Post - 06.02.2005

Jerusalem Post

Analysis: Bad for everyone, not just the Jews

By Sam Ser 

The story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's trial is first and foremost a Russian story, not a Jewish story. At stake is not Jewish freedom, but Russian freedom. 

This explains why the people in Russia who have demonstrated against the trial have seemed to care so little about the Jewish aspect of the Khodorkovsky case, and focused so much on the larger implications for Russian society. 

International human rights groups have weighed in on the lack of judicial transparency in this case, all but accusing President Vladimir Putin's government of manipulating the courts in order to dispose of a political rival. 

In independent Russian newspapers too, one can sense a concern on the part of many journalists and academics that Russia is reverting to a police state. They bemoan the government's pursuit of the so-called oligarchs not on the grounds that the regime is persecuting Jews, but because it is destroying independent business, cutting off financing to the political opposition, and scaring the public. 

Anti-Semitism would be a distant third in the government's hierarchy of motives, after the silencing of rivals and the effective nationalization of super-wealthy companies like Khodorkovsky's oil giant Yukos. 

Still, it is undeniable that almost all those targeted by Putin's regime have been Jewish. With anti-Semitism increasing and becoming more open in Russia, one would expect the organized Jewish community there to insist that the government address that aspect of the anti-oligarch campaign. Yet it hasn't. 

This is likely a consequence, at least in part, of the fact that the organized Jewish community in Russia (as much as it can be called organized) is run by Chabad. 

As Chabad emissaries in the former Soviet Union have told The Jerusalem Post, Chabad was welcomed into the former Soviet Union after its fall on the condition that it focus on yiddishkeit rather than politics. 

Indeed, this has been the case. Throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, Chabad institutions have been instrumental in creating an inspiring renewal of Jewish activity – while interfering little or not at all with their host governments. 

Russia's own chief rabbi, Chabad emissary Berel Lazar, is essentially a Kremlin appointee who has been made to neutralize the more outspoken and politically active leaders of rival Jewish organizations. Lazar does not speak up much regarding political matters, and while he is given audience with Russian officials, he mainly uses such opportunities to ask the government to do more to fight anti-Semitism. 

There is some concern that Russian Jews could face greater dangers because of the Jewish oligarchs, but this concern is not significant. It is difficult to find mention in the mainstream media of Khodorkovsky's Jewishness (actually, he is not halachically Jewish, as only his father is Jewish) as an important element of his case, or of the larger oligarch phenomenon. 

The oligarchs themselves have, with the exception of Khodorkovsky, left the country. 

Vladimir Goussinsky is in Spain. Boris Berezovsky is in London. Leonid Nevzlin and his partners Michael Brudno and Vladimir Dubov are in Israel. They are not likely to return to Russia, and none of their host countries believe the charges that Putin has leveled against them are valid. The money and freedom that these men have lost have been the result not of their Jewishness, but of their powerful businesses and their support for anti-Putin opposition movements. 

In March, Nevzlin told the Post that Putin had gathered Russia's tycoons several years ago to tell them that, if they wanted to keep their money, they would have to keep their money out of politics. Many ignored that threat. 

(One man who has apparently "played ball" with the authorities is Roman Abramovich, who has seen his personal fortune skyrocket; he has even taken over the Chelsea football club in England.) For the moment, then, Putin has the upper hand. 

But the Khodorkovsky case has galvanized Putin's opponents not only inside Russia but around the globe as well. 

American officials such as Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Tom Lantos (both Jewish) have even begun to suggest punishing Russia diplomatically for its march toward centralized, antidemocratic rule. Hopeful activists inside Russia have openly wondered whether a popular revolt could soon topple Putin and his allies. 

Moshe Kantor, a wealthy Russian-Jewish entrepreneur who has defended Putin, is attempting to improve the image of Jews in Russia by highlighting their contributions to society in art, literature, medicine and science. The Jewish influence on politics, though, would be a harder sell. However, if the struggle of a handful of Jewish capitalists ultimately leads to the downfall of Putin and ushers in an era of greater freedom for Russians, the "Jewish angle" of the Khodorkovsky trial could turn out to be the most intriguing one of all.


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Jerusalem Post - 06.01.2005

Jerusalem Post

Khodorkovsky decision 'alarming'

By Talya Halkin 

One year and three days after it began, the biggest trial in post-Soviet Russia ended Tuesday with a nine-year sentence for Jewish tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose Yukos oil empire was dismantled after he challenged President Vladimir Putin. 

The former tycoon vowed to clear his name of the charges, which included tax evasion and fraud, and his company promised to fight on with a series of court battles – keeping a spotlight on the grave doubts the case has raised about the rule of law in Putin's Russia. 

Natan Sharansky, who spent several years as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union, sharply criticized the conviction. 

"No doubt this sentence is selective punishment for political reasons," he said of the case against Khodorkovsky, once estimated to be Russia's richest man and a major challenger to Putin. 

"It's very sad that the judicial system can be used for political aims," Sharansky told The Jerusalem Post. "It's very alarming for everybody like me who knows well the changes in Russia and wants to see Russia moving toward more freedom and democracy." 

He said the trial's twisting of the legal system for political reasons "reminds me of my own trial," but stressed that there's "still a very big difference" between Russia under Putin and the Soviet Union that had jailed him. 

He did indicate, however, that anti-Semitism was also a factor here. 

"Of course his [Khodorkovsky's] Jewishness can help for propaganda, for making it more acceptable to the people," he said, though he stressed that the trial "wasn't a desire to punish him for his Jewishness but for his political ambition." 

Leonid Nevzlin, a former Yukos executive and a partner of Khodorkovsky's, called the verdict the culmination of a "political struggle against democracy" taking place in Russia. 

To escape an arrest warrant, Nevzlin fled to Israel in October 2003. He came with two other Jewish heads of Yukos, Vladimir Duvdov and Mikhail Brodno, who together own 22 percent of the company, or $7 billion worth.

Speaking at a press conference in Tel Aviv in front of a monumental portrait of Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin said that he thought the verdict was not the end of democracy, but rather its beginning. 

"We lost a battle in enemy territory, but we didn't lose the war," he said. 

Nevzlin added that the question of whether or not Khodorkovsky remained in prison would determine whether Russia ends up as a democracy or a dictatorship. 

According to Nevzlin, Khodorkovsky has been sentenced to prevent him from impeding Putin's running in the 2008 presidential election, after he was elected for the second time last year in what Nevzlin called a "pseudo-democratic process." 

"Putin," he said, was both "the prosecutor and the judge" in Khodorkovsky's case, whose outcome had been determined in advance. 

"It was an absolutely obscene show trial that should never have occurred in the 21st century," Khodorkovsky defense attorney Robert Amsterdam told the Post in a telephone interview. 

"This case is probably the most hostile takeover in history," he said, calling it "an attempt to justify the theft of Yukos." 

He lashed out at Putin for "exchanging rule of law for proximity to power" and also at Western countries and businesses that have continued to work with Putin regardless of his political maneuvering. 

"Mr. Putin has been given a pass by the West and that's got to stop," Amsterdam charged. 

The case will be appealed both within and without the country, according to Amsterdam, as well as used as a means of pressuring Western players to consider Russia's attitude toward the justice system when working with the federation. 

The system as it is now, he said, "is non-transparent and is extraordinarily dangerous.

He also criticized the anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding the trial. 

"There was a tremendous undercurrent of anti-Semitism in terms of the oligarchs," he said. Anti-Semitism "is a situation in Russia that's very much alive." 

On a personal note, he described Khodorkovsky's elderly parents' presence in the courtroom and how difficult it was "having to watch them watch him in a cage." 

Given their advanced age, "It probably means they are sentenced to never holding their son again," he said. "It was unbearably painful."

Amsterdam said Khodorkovsky is expected to continue his charitable work from prison, but wouldn't comment on whether he would continue with any political activity, noting only, "that will be hard from prison." 

"Shame! Shame!" pro-Khodorkovsky demonstrators could be heard chanting after the verdict outside the Meshchansky court, where they had rallied each day of the trial holding portraits of the capitalist-turned-philanthropist and balloons in yellow and green, the colors of the Yukos company he founded and turned into what was once the country's biggest crude oil producer. 

"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 ajudged guilty prior to having a fair trial," US President George W. Bush said in Washington, using unusually blunt language about the country presided over by Putin, his ally in the war on terrorism. 

Natalya Vishnyakova, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general, denied the case had anything to do with politics but instead was all about "banal theft." 

Khodorkovsky has already spent 583 days in jail, meaning he would serve about another seven-and-a-half years. 

Pale and with lips pursed, he looked straight ahead as Judge Irina Kolesnikova pronounced the sentence in the packed, sweltering courtroom. His wife Inna was in tears, and his parents Boris and Marina took turns comforting her as Khodorkovsky tried to send reassuring glances from the defendants' cage nearby. 

In a statement later read outside the court by defense attorney Anton Drel, Khodorkovsky said he would not harshly criticize the judge, noting "the pressure she has come under from the initiators of the case when preparing the verdict." 

"The problem, finally, is not with Kolesnikova. But it is that the judicial powers in Russia have turned into a blunt instrument of the authorities," he said. 

The statement also said Khodorkovsky would try to devote his efforts in prison to an array of charitable and social works, including a proposed fund for aiding inmates.

"I do not admit my guilt and consider my innocence proven, so I am going to appeal the sentence," Khodorkovsky said. "For me it is matter of principle to achieve truth and justice in the motherland." 

His co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, found guilty of the same charges and given the same sentence, said, "There's not a sane person who can understand what you have said." The judge then read his sentence again. 

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who are to serve their sentences in a medium-security prison, also were ordered to pay more than 17 billion rubles in taxes and penalties owed by companies they were involved in; Khodorkovsky was additionally ordered to pay 117 million rubles in income taxes and Lebedev to pay 16 million rubles.



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New York Times - 05.31.2005

New York Times

Russian Oil Tycoon Is Convicted and Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

By C.J. CHIVERS and ERIN ARVEDLUND 

MOSCOW -- A Russian court convicted Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the embattled tycoon and founder of the Yukos oil company, of criminal charges today and sentenced him to nine years in a prison camp, bringing to an end the most closely watched trial in Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed.

The verdict and the sentence concluded a lengthy legal exercise whose ending long ago felt foregone.

Mr. Khodorkovsky, 41, who had been the wealthiest man in Russia until he publicly challenged President Vladimir V. Putin, was found guilty of six charges, including fraud and tax evasion. 

Under the terms of his sentence, his remaining prison term will be reduced by the 19 months of pretrial confinement he has already served, and it will end in 2012. Platon Lebedev, a Yukos colleague and fellow defendant, was given the same sentence. Prosecutors had asked for maximum sentences of 10 years.

The court also ordered the two men to pay about $613 million in taxes and fines. A third defendant, Andrei Krainov, was convicted and given a suspended sentence of five and a half-years.

The verdicts were read just before 1 p.m. in a small crowded courtroom near Moscow's center. After the judges called for all to rise and the sentences were handed down, the chief judge asked the two men if they understood the charges and their resolution, according to pooled reports of the journalists allowed into the room.

Mr. Khodorkovsky called the results "a monument to Basmanny justice," referring to the name of the local court where the charges originated and where his defense team claims a rigged prosecution began.

Mr. Lebedev's tone was biting. "Any normal person would not understand," he said.

In the small area where spectators could stand, Mr. Khodorkovsky's wife sobbed, comforted by his father. As word of the verdicts rippled outside the court, protestors supporting the Yukos officials and kept far from the court entrance by a contingent of guards, began chanting, "Lawlessness!" "Not Guilty!" and "Shame!"

Another group of demonstrators, this one pro-government, was almost silent. In interviews, several did not seem to know why they were there, suggesting they had been brought to the court by an interested party.

The sentences end, for the moment, the rout of Mr. Khodorkovsky, several associates and the Yukos oil company, which lost its core asset in an auction last year - one that was also widely criticized as Kremlin-rigged. Prosecutors, however, said more charges were expected. They did not offer details.

Mr. Khodorkovsky was variously regarded in Russia as a victim of Kremlin vindictiveness or a ruthless and unsavory speculator who amassed his almost uncountable fortune on insider deals. Having financed opposition parties, he appeared to have political ambitions of his own. 

The energy tycoon once led a company that employed more than 100,000 people and pumped more crude oil than the nation of Libya. As his company's market share grew, he emerged as a player on the world's energy stage.

Since his arrest in the fall of 2003, Mr. Khodorkovsky's lawyers and supporters have said that the case against him was largely driven by political motivations and Kremlin pique. They characterized the legal actions against him and the company he founded as Moscow's update on the Communist Party's infamous show trials of old. 

In his first term, Mr. Putin made clear his deep animosity to the class of extraordinarily wealthy businessmen, known here as oligarchs, who made their fortune during the period when the vast assets of the Soviet state were privatized. Mr. Putin has since made peace with several of them, but never Mr. Khodorkovsky, who was a critic of Russia's centralized state.

There was public silence from the Kremlin today in the hours after the verdicts were read.

Western governments, including the United States, have warned that Russia's handling of the case raises questions about the Kremlin's commitment to a stable business environment and the rule of law. 

The scene in the Meshchansky Court, where Mr. Khodorkovsky was convicted, had long been predictable, as he and Mr. Lebedev, who had been arrested by masked gunmen, were kept before the panel of judges in a gray metal cage.

And after 10 mind-numbing days of reading the verdict, the judges had spent most of their time this week dismissing much of Mr. Khodorkovsky and Mr. Lebedev's grounds for defense. 

Lawyers for both men said this appeared to be a pre-emptive effort to undermine any appeals, which the two men have 10 days to file.

The battle for the perception of the case began immediately. Yukos issued a statement declaring the verdicts "a gross travesty of justice produced by a judicial system that has not only been content to be maneuvered to destroy Mikhail Khodorkovsky but also is intent on bringing down Yukos."

Expressing some sentiment from the United States Congress, Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, who sits on the House International Relations Committee, appeared outside the court and was harshly critical of the verdicts.

"This political trial, tried before this kangaroo court, has come to a shameful conclusion," Mr. Lantos said. "The conclusion of this trial was predetermined politically." 

Mr. Lantos said he would reintroduce a motion to exclude Russia from the Group of Eight industrial nations, a proposal the White House has previously opposed. He also said he and his colleagues would keep a close eye on any appeals.

The denunciations by Yukos and Mr. Lantos were joined by voices throughout Russia's small opposition, but were also met by unequivocal statements of support for the verdicts from people in Mr. Putin's circle. 

Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the upper house of Russia's Parliament, a body largely compliant with Mr. Putin, said the verdicts were exactly as expected.

"I would not have understood it if the court had acquitted Khodorkovsky," Mr. Mironov told the Interfax news agency. "Then I would have become doubtful about the prosecutor general's office."

Mr. Khodorkovsky, in a statement read outside the courthouse by one of his lawyers, said he would try to maintain a public profile from prison, and would underwrite foundations supporting poetry, philosophy and prisoners in Russia. 

As a man who now appears to have become the world's wealthiest convict - the Russian edition of Forbes magazine estimated his wealth this year at $2 billion, well below the $15 billion he was once thought to possess - he seems to have the resources to keep his name in the news.

Mr. Khodorkovsky also made clear his feelings about the case. "I know that my conviction was decided in the Kremlin," his statement said. "Some in the president's entourage insisted that only an acquittal would inspire society's trust in the authorities. Others believed I should be put in prison for a long time to deprive me of any capacity to fight for freedom."

"To the first group, I would say, 'Thank you.' And I would like to inform the others that they have not won. I will fight for freedom."

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