Extradition Requests

Russia's politically-motivated pursuit of Yukos executives and employees increasingly had international dimensions as the Russian authorities sought legal assistance and the extradition of those who fled for their safety in the course of the Yukos Affair.

All attempts by Russian law enforcement authorities to have former Yukos employees extradited to Russia have failed. The United Kingdom, Spain, Cyprus, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Israel, Switzerland and other countries on numerous occasions refused to cooperate with Russia on Yukos-related requests. All those refusals to provide legal assistance to Russia were explained, at least in part, by the obvious political motivation of the Russian law enforcement authorities.

Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance Requests connected to the Yukos Affair have included:

  • In May 2009, prosecutors requested the extradition of former Yukos executive Antonio Valdes-Garcia, a dual Russian-Spanish citizen, from Spain. Valdes-Garcia had been the head of Fargoil, a former Yukos oil trading subsidiary. Valdes-Garcia had fled Moscow to Spain in January 2007, before being sentenced in Russia for an alleged embezzlement scheme. In August 2009, Spanish authorities, echoing decisions made in other European countries, announced that they would not satisfy Russia's request to extradite Valdes-Garcia. Meanwhile, in November 2011, the Moscow City Court validated Valdes-Garcia's sentence (in absentia) and ruled that should he return to Russia to fulfill his prison term, he would have to do so in a maximum security prison.
  • In April 2008, the District Court in Nicosia, Cyprus, denied extradition to Russia of one of Yukos's former managers. This followed a March 2008 decision not to assist Russian authorities on requests relating to Yukos.
  • In August 2007, the senior prosecutor in the Prosecutor General's Office of Lithuania refused to extradite Mikhail Brudno - a business partner of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev - finding that the Yukos affair was politically motivated, and that Russia had not provided a fair trial to anyone associated with Khodorkovsky.
  • In August 2007, the Swiss Federal Tribunal forbade Swiss authorities from cooperating with their Russian counterparts on requests for legal assistance related to criminal cases against Khodorkovsky, noting that such assistance must be refused when a case is "a subterfuge to pursue a person for his political opinion." This was the first time that Swiss courts denied assistance because a case was political in nature. Read the Swiss Federal Tribunal Ruling.
  • On March 18, 2005, the Bow Street Magistrates Court in the United Kingdom concluded that Mikhail Khodorkovsky was prosecuted for political reasons, and that - if extradited - persons related to Yukos would suffer from politically motivated prosecution. The judge refused to extradite Dmitry Maruev and Natalya Chernysheva. In the same year, courts in the United Kingdom refused to extradite several other former associates of Khodorkovsky, having found that the charges against them were politically motivated. 
  • In 2004, Russian authorities requested judicial assistance from the Liechtenstein State Prosecutor's Office, seeking assistance in obtaining documentation linking former Yukos executive Alexei Golubovich to allegedly misappropriated shares of the Russian fertilizer company Apatit. The Liechtenstein Trial Court initially agreed to provide assistance, but the order was overturned on appeal, and Liechtenstein ultimately rejected Russia's request.