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Saturday, November 06, 2010
Courts - "Russian Courts: Unyielding, an Oligarch vs. Putin"
Not your usual ILB entry, but this column today by Joe Nocera of the NY Times is fascinating. Here is how it starts:
I wish I had enough space to reprint in its entirety Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky’s closing statement, as his latest sham trial in Russia came to an end earlier this week. I have never been so moved by the words of a businessman.Not that Mr. Khodorkovsky is a businessman anymore. Once the most famous of the Russian oligarchs, he ran Yukos Oil, which under his leadership became the best-run, fastest-growing, most transparent company in the country — a gleaming symbol of hope for Russian industry. Mr. Khodorkovsky, however, has spent the last seven years in prison, much of that time in Siberia. Stripped of his company, which was sold off to politically connected insiders, Mr. Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, were convicted of trumped-up tax charges brought by prosecutors acting on behalf of Vladimir V. Putin, who had come to view Mr. Khodorkovsky as a threat.
Then, in 2007, with the prospect of parole on the horizon, the same prosecutors — with what appears to be the complicity of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Yukos’s longtime accounting firm — indicted the two men again, bringing a new round of Kafkaesque charges.
That trial ended on Tuesday. The verdict will most likely be announced in December, not that anyone doubts the outcome.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 6, 2010 04:20 PM
Posted to Courts in general