The Yukos bankruptcy returns to haunt those who took part

Nikolai Sergeyev, Kommersant, 13.05.2008

It became known yesterday that the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's office has petitioned the Zamoskvoretsky court in Moscow to consider criminal charges against defence attorney Natalya Lechbinskaya. She is suspected of misappropriation and other abuses supposedly committed during the bankruptcy of Yukos. The second person named in the case is Stanislav Vinokurov, former president of Yukos RM.

The petition concerning Lechbinskaya — managing partner of Livshits, Lechbinskaya and partners — was submitted on 30 April by Vyacheslav Mityaev, the Investigative Committee’s investigator for particularly important cases. (He is already known for his part in investigating the murder of Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov.) The Zamoskvoretsky district court was due to establish whether there were grounds for charging the lawyer with misappropriation (Article 159 of the Criminal Code) and abuse of authority (Article 201) at a hearing scheduled for 8 May. It did not take place, however. Mrs Lechbinskaya’s defence team informed the court that she was on a business trip in France and requested a postponement until her return. In their words, Lechbinskaya was herself keen to prove her innocence.

Lechbinskaya considers that she is the object of “groundless criminal investigation” as a result of the legal services her bureau provided to the Yukos group of companies. In her appeal to the Prosecutor General Yury Chaika she states that in late 2005 the then director general of the Yukos M Trading House, Stanislav Vinokurov (who later became president of Yukos RM), approached her with a proposal to organise “legal support for proceeding with the bankruptcy of Yukos.” His proposal was, he said, “a matter of national importance” and in doing all this work she would be “acting in the interests of the Russian State in conditions of the strictest confidentiality”. Supposedly, this project was under the personal supervision of leading state officials and Mrs Lechbinskaya could rely on the complete cooperation of State agencies. “To do the work agreed Mr Vinokurov suggested that I draw up contracts with only two Yukos subsidiaries. At the same time he told me that in practice we would provide legal services to all the Yukos companies. Such an approach had been approved, in his words, in order to prevent interference by the company’s Western shareholders and the London management during the transfer of Yukos assets to Rosneft and Gazprom,” asserts Mrs Lechbinskaya.

In December 2007, however, after Yukos’ assets had already passed into the control of the State Lechbinskaya was cross-examined as a witness in the case brought against her former client Stanislav Vinokurov. He was suspected of crimes committed under those same Articles 159 and 201, as part of criminal case No 201/432888-07. According to Lechbinskaya, the investigators considered that the contract between her bureau and Yukos was a sham: the money was paid “not for the provision of legal services but in order to be subsequently returned”, i.e. embezzled. Mrs Lechbinskaya says that those involved in the investigation led her to believe that it was in her interests to cooperate with them and testify against Vinokurov. If she did so, her problems would be solved. She did not give evidence against her former client. The investigators then searched her office, her apartment and even her parents’ home as part of their investigation into the case of Mr Vinokurov. Subsequently they applied to the court to consider charges against the lawyer herself.