Dear Mr. Marder

At the request of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s family, we’d like to bring to your attention a small item entitled No Holiday For Oligarch published in your paper, under the by-line of Tatiana Tobert, on June 28, 2006 (issue no. 142). This item purports to include a quote from Boris Moiseevich, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s father. In fact Boris Moiseevich has never talked to anyone from Zhisn, nor to journalists of any other publication to which your reporter might have been referring. We’d also like to point out that unfortunately this is not the first occurrence of this kind. On behalf of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s family, we urge you to take measures to prevent this sort of thing happening again. The defence lawyers’ press centre is always ready to answer any and all questions your paper may have.

Head of the press-centre for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev’s defence lawyers, M. Ordjonikidze