Lawyers representing Mikhail Khodorkovsky filed an additional appeal with the Moscow City Court related to the charge of embezzlement found in Article 160 of the Russian Criminal Code. The prosecution alleged that Mikhail Khodorkovsky gave money to Media Most (controlled by Vladimir Gusinsky) that he had embezzled from Yukos and some of its subsidiaries.

Mr. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers explained in the appeal that they believe the aforementioned charge should be dismissed. As written in the appeal, “This portion of the ruling [against Mikhail Khodorkovsky] is unlawful, unfounded and should be dismissed due to the following reasons:

The evidence presented by the prosecution was obtained by investigators in gross violation of search and seizure law.

The investigation into this part of the case was conducted without having officially opened a criminal case into this charge; the fact that the assets in question belonged to or were under the control of Khodorkovsky was disproved by evidence included in the case materials, that is Khodorkovsky is not the subject of the crime in question.

Khodorkovsky’s participation in transferring assets of any kind to companies controlled by Gusinsky and Khodorkovsky’s connection to any of the events that occurred in connection with the given charge was not proven by the case materials.

The source of the disbursements as indicated in the court’s ruling was self-contradictory and self-exclusionary.

The assets in question were not spent, but were transferred to companies controlled by Gusinsky within the context of a legitimate business transaction.

All assets in question were returned to the person who transferred them originally.”

In a separate event today, Judge Irina Kolesnikova, the presiding justice in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, returned audio recordings of the trial to Khodorkovsky’s attorneys. The audio recordings were made by the defence lawyers and filled a total of 10 DVD discs. They sent the discs to Judge Kolesnikova on September 2nd as part of their claim that significant distortions and discrepancies exist between their audio recording and the written transcript of the trial’s proceedings as issued by the Meshchansky Court to the lawyers. Judge Kolesnikova rejected their request to include the audio recordings in the body of evidence.