Second Khodorkovsky trial begins - Europe, World - The Independent - 0 views
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Mikhail Khodorkovsky opened his defence at the start of a new trial in Moscow for money-laundering by condemning the Russian government and legal system. He labelled the charges against him as “senseless”. The trial could see Mr Khodorkovsky, formerly the richest man in Russia, sentenced to another two decades in prison. On the first day, his defence team presented a list of 478 people they wanted to call to the witness stand during the trial, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials.
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The former head of the Yukos oil empire has been in jail since his arrest in 2003, and was sentenced in 2005 to eight years in prison after a trial that was widely believed to have been punishment for breaking an unofficial deal not to go into politics.
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Then, he was found guilty of tax evasion and fraud. Now, he is back on trial, together with his former business partner Platon Lebedev, facing a new set of charges involving theft and money-laundering.
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The new case has been portrayed as a key test for President Dmitry Medvedev’s calls to reform the Russian legal system and end “legal nihilism” in the country. Legal experts have said that the charges are difficult to fathom, partly because they suggest that the two men stole the entire oil output of Yukos for six whole years without anyone noticing at the time.
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Later during proceedings, the defence team said they wanted to call Mr Putin to the witness stand. Mr Khodorkovsky had met Mr Putin when the latter was Russian president to discuss the oil sector, said the defence team: “This witness is essential for understanding circumstances that are relevant to this case,” the lawyer Vadim Kluvgant told the court. Other top officials that the defence wishes to question are Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of Russia’s FSB spy agency, and Igor Sechin, a shadowy Kremlin figure who is now Russia’s top energy official and is widely rumoured to be behind the initial attack on Yukos.