Courtroom Report: February 2, 2010
Mr. Maliy was unable to attend today's hearing, so the prosecution called a different witness. Ms. Elena Timoshenko worked at various YUKOS affiliates from 1997 through 2007, her last place of work being a section head in accounting and tax compliance department at YUKOS-FBC.
Ms. Timoshenko testified that her section provided accounting services to several YUKOS affiliates, including Fargoil, Ratmir, Muskron and others, and drafted accounting and tax statements for these companies. As her section transferred from YUKOS-Invest to YUKOS-FBC, another responsibility was to track short term investments for companies like Alta-Trade.
Mr. Lakhtin asked about the details of her section's day-to-day operations, including contacts with directors of the aforementioned companies. Ms. Timoshenko remembered Messrs. Valdes-Garcia, Malahovsky and Konoshenko's names, but did not have much more to add.
After additional questions about these companies, Mr. Lakhtin motioned to read one transcript of Ms. Timoshenko's interrogation. The defense pointed out that the transcript was from a case that was never merged with Messrs. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's case and the case file was missing any procedural documents showing how the transcript ended up included in the file. Despite Mr. Lakhtin's inability to explain how some of these transcripts were included, Judge Danilkin allowed Mr. Lakhtin to read them all. Afterwards, Mr. Krasnov noted that one transcript was incomplete, with a 3 page transcript covering an almost 3 hour long interrogation, while another transcript presented listed an interrogation lasting over 8 hours, a violation of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
In a short afternoon session, Ms. Timoshenko, cross-examined by Messrs. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, testified that her department worked closely with auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers and confirmed that no one ever asked her to conceal any documents from them. The companies that her section prepared tax statements for were sometimes audited by tax authorities, but any recalculations were insignificant. Finally, during her 10 year tenure at YUKOS, neither her colleagues nor her superiors ever pressured her to do anything illegal.
Mr. Maliy is expected to return tomorrow.
The trial will resume on Wednesday, February 3, 10:30 Moscow Time.