The Moscow City Court concluded its hearings into the appeal filed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. After considering the case materials and positions presented by both the defence and the prosecution, Judge Vyacheslav Tarasov and his two colleagues needed just one hour to reach a decision. Ultimately, the Moscow City Court upheld the guilty verdict issued by Meshchansky Court. The only change was a slight reduction in the prison term, from 9 to 8 years.

Genrikh Padva and Yuri Schmidt were present for the first time during the appeals process. Ironically, it was also the first time they had been able to see or meet with their client. Prison officials forbade the lawyers from consulting with Mr. Khodorkovsky due to a mysterious quarantine that had been issued in conjunction with the cells in which both Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are currently kept. Because of this complication, the court declared a recess to allow the lawyers to meet with him in the courtroom before the proceedings began.

In addition to Genrikh Padva and Yuri Schmidt, lawyers Anton Drel, Denis Dyatlev, Elena Levina and Canadian lawyer Bob Amsterdam were in attendance. Approximately 70 journalists and 20 video cameras were allowed into the courtroom.

Yuri Schmidt spoke first after the court reconvened. He immediately filed a motion to postpone the date of the hearing of the appeal since the law was violated during the procedure of setting the date of the current hearing. Genrikh Padva followed with a motion of his own. He asked the court to accept as evidence the results of expert analyses performed at the behest of Mr. Khodorkovsky’s defence counsel but were rejected previously by Meshchansky Court.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself filed a motion requesting additional time for a “complete and detailed study” of the court transcripts and formulation of objections to the contents of those documents. He justified his request by stating that, of the 30 volumes that make up the transcripts, he was only given 15 volumes to review. During the two weeks that he was in possession of those 15 volumes, he was only able to review one-quarter of the material therein. Mr. Khodorkvsky estimated that he would need no less than 8 additional weeks to complete the review all of the court transcripts.

As might be expected, Prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin categorically opposed all of the motions. In his opinion, the aforementioned motions were intended to “drag out the process.”

Of the three motions filed, the court only upheld Mr. Padva’s motion and accepted the documents he included in his motion for review. These documents include a two-volume expert analysis of the Apatit privatization and valuation conducted by the Economic Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a valuation of the 20-percent share of privatized Apatit stock as performed by Ernst & Young.

Yuri Schmidt called for a dismissal of the judges hearing the appeal in response to the judges’ refusal to provide his client with an equitable amount of time to review court transcripts from the Meshchansky Court trial,. Mikhail Khodorkovsky added his support to the motion, saying, “I agree with my lawyer if only because it was just pronounced that I had been given the chance to review all of the transcripts from the proceedings in Meshchansky Court.” He reiterated that he had only been given half of the 30 volumes to review.

Mr. Schmidt observed that the court’s decision to reject both his request for the appeal proceedings to be rescheduled for a later date and his client’s request for additional time to review the Meshchansky transcripts is a departure from legal principles. “Violations have been overlooked at all stages of the case against [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky and they continue to occur at the appeals level,” Schmidt said. He also addressed the impossibility of the court being able to adequately familiarize itself with thousands of pages of case materials and hundreds of pages of appeals documents in such a short period of time. “It is impossible for the court to have been able to review the hundreds of thousands of pages from the case materials and the hundreds of pages that make up the appeal in the seven days after the case was received by the Moscow City Court,” he concluded. Yuri Schmidt based his motion to dismiss the court on these violations.

Judge Tarasov consulted with the two other judges on the panel for a brief moment before rejecting Mr. Schmidt’s motion based on their opinion that the motion had no legal justification. More specifically, Judge Tarasov concluded that the court did not demonstrate a direct or indirect interest in one of the parties to the case.

After considering all motions, the court moved on to review the substance of the appeals. The panel of judges read aloud the position taken by the defence lawyers, namely that they request the court to overturn the lower court’s ruling. The lawyers base their position on the fact that the Meshchansky Court decision is “based on an improper interpretation of the law” and the admission of falsified evidence.

The lawyers also asked the Moscow City Court to dismiss the charges against their clients altogether. According to the appeal as read by the panel of judges, the Meshchansky Court violated the principle of equality before the court of the prosecution and defence as evidenced by the need for the defence to prove the innocence of its clients rather than placing the burden of proof on the prosecution. As a result of the court’s bias, the defendants were also denied the right to a full and fair defence. Among other rights violated, the lawyers listed the violation by the Meshchansky Court of the principle of impartiality and openness as well as examples of intimidation of the lawyers.

Genrikh Padva was given the floor after the court had concluded reading the principle complaints by the defence as outlined in the appeals. Mr. Padva offered a number of additional arguments in support of the appeals complaints, including a detailed list of every procedural violation committed during the Meshchansky trial. He concluded with a request of the court to overturn the Meshchansky Court verdict.

Yuri Schmidt was then given the opportunity to present his position before the court. Since Mr. Schmidt had been responsible for presenting the defence’s case relating to the charge of personal tax evasion, he decided to focus his comments on the veracity of this charge. The lawyer provided examples of violations of the Criminal Procedural Code that were committed in the prosecution of this charge, proved the illegitimate nature of the conclusions made by Meshchansky Court, and called for this charge to be dismissed.

Finally, the court offered the defendant himself the opportunity to make a statement. Mikhail Khodorkovsky first discussed the politicization of the case against him and then turned to analyze each of the charges individually. He explained that time constraints only allowed him enough time to compose his thoughts and observations in connection with the charge involving the transfer of funds to Media MOST. “A bit of pulp fiction was hidden in the charges by the prosecution with the hope that nobody would read it. Of course we were going to read it!” he said.

Mr. Khodorkovsky reiterated his innocence and expressed his confidence that he had proven himself innocent in his analysis of the Media MOST charge today in court. “It is likewise as clear to me that there is no evidence that supports each point of the prosecution’s allegations,” he concluded. “The Meshchansky Court ruling has no correlation with justice. Not only was my participation in the events alleged in the charges brought against me nonexistent, there was not even a crime committed…There was no court in the Meshchansky Court.”

Prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin presented his position, which concluded that the verdict pronounced in Meshchansky Court was lawful, just, and founded.

The panel of judges retired to chambers to consider the appeal of both sides and returned to issue its ruling almost 12 hours after the proceedings had begun. Judge Tarasov announced that the court dismissed the charges relating to Media MOST and failure to comply with a court order in the case of the Apatit and NIUIF privatizations, which reduced the sentence from 9 to 8 years.

The court also qualified the charge relating to the sale of apatit concentrate, changing the period during which the crime had been committed to 1999-2000 and eliminating the period 1997-1999 due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

The defence lawyers expressed their intention to appeal the ruling at the Moscow City Court Presidium.