Суд мести

Rulers in Russia are unlike many in Europe, in that the law is no bar to their thirst for vengeance. History tells us that even the legalistic Catherine II out of jealousy ordered a Moscow police chief to publicly rape one of her unfortunate rivals in her own home. The old public servant blanched but conscientiously did as he was bidden. This brother in spirit of Vladimir Ustinov raped the noblewoman for the same motives that drove Russia's Procuracy General in the late spring of 2003.

Leonid NEVZLIN describes how the judicial persecution of Yukos's top people began and why Aleksey Pichugin was the first to fall victim:

"From the outset they regarded Khordorkovskiy, Lebedev and me as the key players. And we realised that they would pin the Apatit affair on Platon because there simply wasn't anything else open to them - at the time hostilities commenced, Platon had nothing to do with Yukos. I was Khodorkovskiy's deputy in charge of security among other things so they had to pin something criminal on me, which is exactly what they did, and attack Khodorkovskiy by association.

As we know, they found a route to Platon via his signatures on some documents for the Apatit purchase. Platon did indeed sign the papers when we won Apatit at auction. But we were totally relaxed about this because we'd taken part in the auction on the terms set by the state. The state was looking for a buyer for Apatit, which was moribund, and in effect we offered our services to save the company. We went into the auction, we bought Apatit, and it's now a modern and profitable business.

Apatit's special status was confirmed by our friends' attempts to seize it in any way they could. In autumn 2002 one of these "friends", Vyacheslav Kantor, a customer of Apatit, wrote to Putin to complain about the prices it was charging. He did this through Novgorod Region Governor Prusak (and with the backing of another three governors, one of whom was the governor of Smolensk Region and an FSB general), and he, well Prusak actually, demanded a review of Apatit's privatisation. It wasn't the first letter of this kind, but by now the FSB had started to latch onto such "local initiatives" as a way of putting pressure on businesses.

However, even in spring 2003 everyone could see there was no chance of a review. Court cases started up against us, Menatep that is, as soon as we acquired Apatit. We won every case and eventually, to save face, the Federal Property Fund settled with us out of court. Whereupon all complaints, even about technicalities, were lifted.

Besides, I can't say that Ustinov, whom I respected but was nonetheless Prosecutor General, in early April 2003 carried out Putin's instruction to deal with Prusak's letter about Apatit. Because that month he wrote to Putin that "there is no evidence to confirm Prusak's allegations". At the time not even Ustinov knew that in March 2003 a group of officials among Putin's closest associates had begun plotting an offensive against Yukos.

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