Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center

In a shortened week that saw a rare Saturday hearing, one witness took to the witness stand. Mr. Gitas Anilionis, former Executive Director of SP RTT, was questioned for one and a half days and spent one and a half days listening to his own testimony from pre-trial interrogations and his testimony at the Malahovsky/Pereverzin trial, including informative audiotapes of his interrogations by investigator Karimov. Listening to the Malahovsky/Pereverzin transcript, everyone learned that Mr. Anilionis could be less than truthful when testifying in court.

Mr. Anilionis, who knew Mr. Lebedev since they worked together for the USSR Ministry of Geology, began his business career as Mr. Lebedev's deputy at MENATEP, but was soon appointed to manage SP RTT. Mr. Lakhtin spent most of the morning session questioning Mr. Anilionis about SP RTT and events that took place prior to 1998, including privatization of YUKOS and VNK. Mr. Anilionis testified that SP RTT was a secretarial firm providing company registration services, along with accounting and financial services, and consulting. Mr. Anilionis confirmed that SP RTT employees served as directors for companies registered by SP RTT. Mr. Anilionis testified that SP RTT provided registration services for YUKOS-Moscow, YUKOS-RM and YUKOS-EP. He confirmed that the requests to register these companies came from someone at YUKOS, but he did not remember from whom.

Beginning with Mr. Lakhtin's showing the witness pages from Mr. Kraynov's 1997 daily planner, the defense would voice objections to most of the case materials being shown to the witness. In addition to the daily planner circa 1997, the defense objected to the prosecutor's attempt at having Mr. Anilionis decipher Mr. Kraynov's daily entries.

Mr. Lakhtin's questions about the privatization of VNK and subsequent events were interspersed with the showing of various documents. As was often the case, Mr. Lakhtin had to announce the document before showing it to the witness, because the prosecution failed to enter into record all the evidence during the five months it spent reading documents from the case materials.

Mr. Lakhtin spent the rest of the hearing questioning Mr. Anilionis about Behles Petroleum, South Petroleum and Baltic Petroleum. Numerous documents, including crude oil contracts, were announced and entered into record. The defense was objecting continuously, both over the lack of authenticating attributes - even the prosecution's "True Copy" stamps were missing - and over the incorrect and, often, incomplete translations by Ms. Zueva and unknown translators. After the examination of Baltic Petroleum's financial statements and auditor's report for 1999, Mr. Khodorkovsky asked the court to notice that despite a turnover of close to $731 million USD, the company's profit was approximately $22 million USD, or close to 3%. Mr. Khodorkovsky anticipated an interesting conversation on the topic of embezzlement.

As the trial resumed on Friday, Mr. Lakhtin immediately turned to questions about Behles Petroleum, South Petroleum and Baltic Petroleum. Mr. Lakhtin was either expecting the court to read his mind or was uninterested in having the court understand what he was asking the witness about, because the next sequence of questions asked whether "there were problems for those who transferred the funds." Judge Danilkin's efforts to get a clarification on prosecutor's question were met with an explanation consisting of "those persons who had problems - did they have problems." Mr. Anilionis, who seemed to be the only one to understand what the prosecutor was asking, replied that "problems happened later." Mr. Lakhtin made another attempt to have Mr. Anilionis explain entries from Mr. Kraynov's daily planner. Telling the court that Mr. Anilionis should look at Mr. Kraynov's daily planner "because it illustrated the events Mr. Anilionis was testifying about," Mr. Lakhtin began to approach the witness. Judge Danilkin struck Mr. Lakhtin's question, telling him that the prosecution had ample opportunity to ask Mr. Kraynov when the latter was in court.

A heated exchanged involving everyone followed Mr. Lakhtin's attempts to question Mr. Anilionis about events that took place between 1995 and 1998, while implying that crude oil was embezzled began during that time period. While the defense objected and asked the court to strike the question, the court was telling the prosecutor not to make such statements without citing to the indictment. Mr. Lakhtin asked to make a statement instead, but was denied permission by the court. Mr. Lakhtin, citing to "international norms of fairness in an adversarial proceeding," assured the court that he would not be making a statement, although this resulted in his inability to explain the "substance" of the indictment. As he resumed his questions and interrupted Mr. Anilionis's response, Mr. Lakhtin was issued an on-the-record warning for repeatedly interrupting witnesses.

Mr. Lakhtin motioned to read transcripts of Mr. Anilionis's interrogations. The defense, arguing against granting of the motion, told the court that Mr. Lakhtin attempted to get around of the court's earlier prohibition on further questions about Mr. Kraynov's daily planner. After an extensive back and forth, Judge Danilkin partially granted Mr. Lakhtin's request, telling the prosecutor to be more specific in identifying the transcripts he wanted to read.

Both transcripts focused on Behles Petroleum, South Petroleum and Baltic Petroleum, as well as the privatization of YUKOS. Mr. Anilionis described the companies' histories and speculated on their purpose. Mr. Anilionis spent some time deciphering Mr. Kraynov's daily planner, guessing at certain initials and letters. Mr. Karimov's interrogation style was on full display. Mr. Anilionis faced numerous questions made in the form of a statement, which resulted in Mr. Lakhtin being forced to adjust his intonation after several questions were ended with a period and not a question mark. Picking up Mr. Karimov's style, Mr. Anilionis began using slang terms, going so far as to describe Messrs. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev as "being idiots when it came to selling crude oil," prompting a laugh from behind the glass. Mr. Karimov's incredulous reaction to the fact that Mr. Anilionis held YUKOS shares, including "I always thought Khodorkovsky owned YUKOS," caused another round of laughter from Messrs. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

After both transcripts were read, the court began playing audio tapes. Both audiotapes revealed several major inconsistencies and omissions. Several times Mr. Anilionis's use of "YUKOS" was substituted for "They" in the written version of the interrogation. In another omission, most of Mr. Anilionis's qualifiers like "I suppose," "may be" and "probably," never made it into the written version.

Saturday resumed with audiotape playback. Messrs. Anilionis and Karimov continued to discuss Mr. Anilionis's role in privatization of YUKOS. That discussion, often sounding like friendly banter between two old acquaintances, was over a half-an-hour long.

After the playback, Mr. Lakhtin motioned to read two more interrogation transcripts. Mr. Lakhtin's arguments for reading both transcripts did not differ from those he used on previous occasions. In his view, material contradictions in Mr. Anilionis's testimony included lack of specificity when identifying company names and certain dates. Mr. Lakhtin's motion was granted.

The first transcript included Mr. Anilionis's testimony about his tenure on VNK's Board of Directors. Mr. Anilionis explained to Ms. Rusanova that he acted according to the wishes of YUKOS, VNK's majority shareholder. The second transcript was about the purchase of Bank MENATEP collecting rights and YUKOS shares from Daiwa Europe, West Merchant Bank and Standard Bank London. Despite Mr. Lakhtin's earlier insistence that Mr. Anilionis provided detailed information on the subject, the transcript revealed that Mr. Anilionis was aware that YUKOS shares were pledged to secure a loan for the privatization of VNK, but he lacked any knowledge about actual details.

Defense was successful in convincing the court to allow it to read the rest of Mr. Anilionis's interrogation transcripts from the case file, as well as the transcript from the Malahovsky/Pereverzin trial, where Mr. Anilionis testified in February 2007. This was in spite of Mr. Lakhtin's usual arguments about defense violating the Criminal Procedure Code and theatrical arguments about defense delaying the trial.

In October 2000, after describing his work history, Mr. Anilionis was asked by investigator Shumilov why Mr. Anilionis, on September 3, 1998, wrote a letter in support of transferring VNK's management functions to YUKOS. Mr. Anilionis testified that after YUKOS acquired a controlling block of VNK shares it made sense for Rosprom to manage VNK, because the former was connected to YUKOS. [Rosprom also managed YUKOS. -Eds.] Furthermore, Mr. Anilionis pointed out that all of Rosprom's functions were clearly defined in the company's by-laws. Mr. Anilionis testified that he did not possess any knowledge about the exchange of VNK subsidiary shares, because at the time of the exchange he was no longer serving on VNK's Board.

In May 2001, Mr. Anilionis was asked additional questions about the exchange of VNK subsidiaries' shares. He denied any knowledge of the exchange and, when presented with a letter supporting the exchange and signed by him, told investigator Shumilov that he always voted based on the materials he received before meetings of the board.

In October 2003, Mr. Anilionis met, once again, with investigator Shumilov. Written in a form of short answers, aside from his work history and confirmation of knowledge of certain persons, Mr. Anilionis answered "I'm not sure" and "I don't remember" to all of Mr. Shumilov's questions.

From the Malahovsky/Pereverzin trial transcript everyone in the courtroom learned that Mr. Anilionis lied in the Basmanny Court. Asked by Mr. Dudnik, Mr. Pereverzin's defense attorney, whether he knew Mr. Karimov and the last time he was questioned by the investigator, Mr. Anilionis testified that he was last interrogated by Mr. Karimov in 2003-2004 and not about [the events and circumstances Messrs. Malahovsky and Pereverzin were being tried for]. [As the transcripts found in the Khamovnicheskiy Court case materials prove, Mr. Anilionis was interrogated by Mr. Karimov at least two times within two months of testifying in Basmanny Court. -Eds.]

Also, the transcript was interspersed with questions Mr. Dudnik posed to Mr. Pereverzin. Mr. Dudnik asked Mr. Pereverzin whether Mr. Anilionis was correct in asserting that Mr. Lebedev sent Mr. Pereverzin to Cyprus. "That's his opinion. Lebedev did not send me to Cyprus," Mr. Pereverzin replied.

The trial will resume on Monday, March 2, 10:00 Moscow Time.