Oil man condemns 'senseless' charges

MOSCOW – Mikhail Khodorkovsky opened his defence at the start of a new trial in Moscow for money-laundering by condemning the Russian Government and legal system.

He labelled the charges against him as "senseless".

The trial could see Khodorkovsky, formerly the richest man in Russia, sentenced to another two decades in prison. On the first day, his defence team presented a list of 478 people they wanted to call to the witness stand during the trial, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other top officials.

The former head of the Yukos oil empire has been in jail since his arrest in 2003, and was sentenced in 2005 to eight years in prison after a trial that was widely believed to have been punishment for breaking an unofficial deal not to go into politics.

Then, he was found guilty of tax evasion and fraud. Now, he is back on trial, together with his former business partner Platon Lebedev, facing a new set of charges involving theft and money-laundering.

The new case has been portrayed as a key test for President Dmitry Medvedev's calls to reform the Russian legal system and end "legal nihilism" in the country. Legal experts have said that the charges are difficult to fathom, partly because they suggest that the two men stole the entire oil output of Yukos for six whole years without anyone noticing at the time.

Court proceedings opened an hour later than scheduled in a packed room at Khamovnichesky Court in central Moscow. The air was thick with sweat as dozens of Russian and foreign journalists crammed into a small space at the back of the courtroom. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev appeared in good spirits before the trial started.

Judge Viktor Danilkin opened proceedings by asking Russia's most famous prisoner his name, address, former occupation, and whether he had been tried for any crimes before. Khodorkovsky gave straight answers to the initial questions but Lebedev couldn't resist the chance to get in an early barb.

When asked if he had received a copy of the accusations, he described them as a "falsification, dreamed up by a criminal group". The judge curtly snapped at him to answer the questions he was being asked.

Khodorkovsky told the court that he was happy to answer any questions related to the charges and would not speak at length about the politicised nature of the trial, "as the political sub-current of the whole Yukos case is self-evident". He accused the Russian Government of hypocrisy and corruption, and said that many officials had benefited financially from the collapse of Yukos.

"In general, my motto in this trial is taken from the Soviet political dissidents of the 1970s," said Khodorkovsky at the end of his opening statement. "The authorities should observe their own laws."'

Later during proceedings, the defence team said they wanted to call Putin to the witness stand. Khodorkovsky had met Putin when the latter was Russian President to discuss the oil sector, said the defence team.

The judge said such requests were "premature", and has so far rejected all of the defence's motions. The defence team says it fears that a guilty verdict has been "ordered" from above. "We know what's going to happen, of course. But we have to keep hope," said Khodorkovsky's mother, Marina, outside the court.

- INDEPENDENT