Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center

On September 18th, State prosecutors announced that they had completed presenting the case materials in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. There is one joint conclusion of the presentation of the prosecution's evidence: undisputable trust in the defendants. This belief is shared by all those who had the patience to observe the prosecutor's reading of the documents for the past four months, and proves that the charges are false, politically-motivated and corrupted.

The next stage of the process will see examination of the witnesses from the prosecution. The defence team hopes to see actual witnesses make statements to the Court, rather than listening to their old ‘written evidence' being read out.

On September 22, 2009 a press conference was given by Yuri Shmidt, Lead Russian Defence Lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other members of the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev legal defence team. At the conference, the attorneys including Yuri Shmidt, Yelena Liptser and Vadim Klyuvgant, issued a joint statement summarizing the results of submitting the written evidence by the prosecutors:

Read the full transcript of the press conference >>

"On September 18, the state prosecutors in Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev's case announced they have finished submitting their written evidence to the court. The main result of this stage of the trial is that the court has not received any documental evidence that confirms the accusations. Moreover, the documents submitted to the court rebut all these accusations.

Due to the specifics of the economic crimes that our defendants are being accused of, the documental evidence have a priority significance. In similar cases the whole scope of crime, should it have been committed in reality, would have been clear after this stage of the trial. In our case after the state prosecutors had read what they call written evidence, everyone who was able to observe these reading for the last four and half month is now ultimately and unconditionally certain that our defendants are innocent. This is another confirmation of the artificial, political and corrupt nature of persecution against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev's for the last six years.

During the time allegedly spent for investigation of the written evidence, the prosecutors read or retold a vast number of documents. As already mentioned, none of those documents indicated that the oil disappeared or that any of the alleged complainants lacked 350 million tons of oil, allegedly stolen by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. In contrast, many of the documents directly support simple and obvious facts that help to completely destroy these crazy allegations:

• All the oil produced was shipped to customers in accordance with the contracts and received by them; all movements of oil are fully documented;
• Not only the oil producers experienced no damage whatsoever having received payment that covered all their expenses related to oil production, but they also gained profits;
• No one has ever reported any loss (let alone stealing) of oil indicated in the indictment in any part.

The guilt that was not proved equals to innocence.

Moreover, it proves that the allegations are fraud and lack any common sense. Everyone will be able to see this even more clearly, once the defense starts presenting its evidence in the court.

Reading of so called written evidence by the prosecutors clearly demonstrated the facts that defense was constantly pointing to during the whole duration of "Yukos case": massive number of contradictions, logical and legal clashes, forgery and other distortions in the documents, blatant violations of law in the process of their acquisition.

Being fully aware of this, but trying to fulfill the task of illegal reprisal of innocent victims, the prosecutors were not ashamed of manipulating and simply lying to the court.

Unfortunately, the court enables them to do this.

Another interim result of the trial is the massive violations of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev's fundamental rights, first of all - right for defense, right for freedom and habeas corpus provision. The most horrible (of course, after their illegal criminal prosecution) is the absolutely illegal practice of their unjustifiable incarceration. They have already been sentenced to freedom deprivation, and are now kept under arrest as accused (criminal defendants), which in essence means in prison, while they were not sentenced to the prison regime by any court. Such practice in this case has already been condemned by the European court of human rights.

Questioning of the prosecution witnesses will take place during the next stage of the court hearings. The defense is prepared for this and hopes that all these witnesses will really be called in the court and will in fact come to testify, instead of filing a sick leave, or going away on long business trips, to put it simply: go in hiding. In other words, we hope in the open trial we will be able to hear the sworn statements, and not the reading of extracts from their testimonies received in investigators' offices."