Witness Testimony Summary: Alla Karaseva
Bio:
Ms. Karaseva was an accountant at SP RTT from 1997 through early 1999. After SP RTT was liquidated, Ms. Karaseva joined YUKOS-FBC, as an accounting consultant, where she worked until July 2003. [Ms. Karaseva, who was 65 years old at the time, was arrested in November 2007 and placed into Matrosskaya Tishina SIZO. After 4 months of interrogations, in a special trial held at the Basmanny Court, and based on an agreement similar to a plea-bargain, Ms. Karaseva was found guilty of fraud committed while being a member of an organized group led by an unknown person who answered to Messrs. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. She received a suspended sentence of 5 and a half years, including 4 years probation. Ms. Karaseva was unable to testify at the Khamovnicheskiy Court due to medical reasons and the defense had no opportunity to cross-examine her. -Eds.]
Transcript Reading Date:
Transcript Summary:
Ms. Karaseva was questioned on several companies registered in zones with preferential tax treatments and on her interactions with several SP RTT and YUKOS-FBC employees, including Mss. Golub and Kuchusheva and Messrs. Anilionis, Kraynov, Kartashov and others. Several interrogations focused on circumstances surrounding her staying in Cyprus and Ukraine, prior to returning to Russia in 2007.
While at SP RTT, Ms. Karaseva performed accounting for three companies, all registered in internal zones with preferential tax treatment. Ms. Karaseva prepared the companies' accounting and tax statements. After a while she became a nominal director for one of the companies, Virtus.
After she joined YUKOS-FBC, Ms. Karaseva answered to Mss. Golub and Gareeva. Late in 1999 Ms. Karaseva became Forest Oil's director and remained in that position for 2 months. During that time she signed off on a document authorizing Forest Oil's tax payment with a YUKOS promissory note. Ms. Karaseva told the investigator that she never doubted the legality of paying with a promissory note, because YUKOS' legal department previously vetted this payment. Ms. Karaseva explained that there was legislation and correspondence from tax regulators, both allowing for payments to be made with promissory notes, in lieu of cash. These government documents did not give her cause to be suspicious. Ms. Karaseva was reappointed Forest Oil's director in late 2000. According to Ms. Karaseva, she was not aware of Forest Oil receiving a refund based on a 1999 overpayment with the aforementioned promissory note. She testified that Lesnoy's City Council, where Forest Oil was registered, extended the company's preferential tax treatment in 2000. Investigator Prokhorov asked, after showing some documents, whether Forest Oil could take advantage of preferential tax treatment. Ms. Karaseva answered that, based on the documents he was showing her and which she never saw before, it could not. However, based on other documents she saw before, she thought the company could take advantage of preferential tax treatment.
[Messrs. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's names were not mentioned in any of the eight transcripts the prosecution read. -Eds.]