Charges Dropped Against YUKOS’ Aleksanyan
A Moscow court dropped criminal charges against Vasily Aleksanyan, a former YUKOS vice president.
The Financial Times reports that Aleksanyan's three-year detention on charges of tax fraud and embezzlement had provoked an international outcry. The court agreed to terminate the case because the statute of limitations on the alleged crimes, said to have been committed in 1998-2000, had expired.
The Moscow Times notes that Aleksanyan, who is gravely ill with AIDS, unexpectedly attended Thursday's hearing to personally inform the judge that he did oppose the closing of the criminal case against him without his acquittal. He wore a medical mask in court and left before the hearing was over.
Aleksanyan's lawyers said he would now be free to seek treatment for his disease outside the country after battling for years to get the charges dropped.
Bloomberg quotes Vadim Klyuvgant, a lawyer for Khodorkovsky, as saying that it is impossible to predict how the latest development may affect Khodorkovsky's case. Klyuvgant said: "If anything was done in this case according to the law, all the cases would have been resolved a long time ago." He added: "Personally I am happy for Aleksanyan, glad he got freed from this tortured yoke."