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The greater the detail in this episode, the more unlikely it all becomes. According to Korovnikov, Pichugin gave him a red Audi for beating up Yukos employee Kolesov and the attack on Kostina. Witnesses had seen him in it. This seemed plausible. But then testimony from the car's previous owner was included in the file. I was amazed to read that this man had asked Peshkun, a known car trader, to sell the vehicle, and had been surprised to see Korovnikov driving around in it.
Peshkun's story here is that he sold the Audi to Korovnikov for 3,000 dollars, of which Korovnikov only paid half. As soon as Korovnikov had been arrested, Peshkun sold the car again to his (Korovnikov's) wife for just 500 dollars. This version of events was also included in the file. So what's all this about a reward for services rendered, if Korovnikov had bought the car?
At this stage the investigators did not even bother to make these stories correlate to each other. It was only much later that Peshkun suddenly declared that he agreed with Korovnikov's story: Pichugin had given him the Audi after all. In return for great wisdom, obviously.
Chapter 8
Features of the Russian judicial system
It seems that those "handling" the case in the security bodies were worried at the inconsistencies, not to mention inventions, in the preliminary investigation. They knew the verdict beforehand, of course. But they did not want to show themselves up in front of the whole world. This was not any old trial.
The way out, as always, was found in the arsenal of administrative measures. They were probably proud of what they might call a "technical solution" - they simply declared the trial secret.
This happened as the Pichugin file was making its way from the Procuracy General to the courtroom, already stamped "secret". But only some of the evidence consisted of classified documents: 67 pages across 34 volumes. And these documents, which were used by our judiciary to cover up its shame, need closer examination.
The obvious becomes secret
As they familiarised themselves with the case, the defence read it as unclassified and was well aware that it contained no secrets.
There are rules governing the way our courts work with classified documents. If the case is secret then the defence, as a rule, makes extracts as it prepares for the trial. But it's not allowed to remove these extracts from prison, in our case from Lefortovo. It must instead hand them over in a special procedure before the end of the working day.
Pichugin's lawyers were free to make whatever extracts they wanted from the files, without any special procedures being imposed on them, and they freely took the extracts out of the prison. In fact, the defence photocopied all 34 volumes of evidence with the blessing of the court and prosecution, and freely took them out of the building as well. At that time, the case was still unclassified. It seems that the prosecution took another look at the evidence just ahead of the trial and, given the weakness of their case, decided to call it secret. This explains the inconsistencies in the authorities' conduct.
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