Lawyer: Khodorkovsky Accused of the Physically Impossible
In an interview for Russian publication Agrumenty i Fakty, Natalia Terekhova, a lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, commented on the new case against her client and his business partner Platon Lebedev. In the interview, Terekhova said:
"Khodorkovsky is accused of the physically impossible. Misappropriation implies taking possession of someone else's property. The first contradiction in the charges against him is that Khodorkovsky supposedly stole oil from himself. The second is that the figure of 350 million tons of oil is equivalent to all the oil produced by Yukos during six years. The charges in the new case against Khodorkovsky will destroy the principle of the unity of judicial practice in Russia. We would like to believe that the case will be heard before an honest, just and independent court, since an objective decision in our case will inevitably have a positive and very powerful effect on the entire judicial system."
She added that if a guilty verdict is pronounced, the Russian government will have to pay $40 billion of taxes back to YUKOS as well as returning all assets.