Khodorkovsky gives his verdict
by The Economist online | MOSCOW
Some words become history years after being spoken. Others carry historic weight as soon as they are uttered. The last words spoken today by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as his 18-month trial drew to a close, belong to the second category. The statement[PDF] he read out from his bullet-proof glass cage in a packed Moscow court will be cited in history textbooks, just as the case itself will be.
Mr Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 and the destruction of his Yukos oil company have changed Russian history, and continue to determine it. Today's short speech was clinically accurate in its description of where, seven years later, Russia and he have ended up.
As Mr Khodorkovsky said, the people who put him and Platon Lebedev, his business partner, in prison wanted to show that they are above the law and will always get their way. “So far, they have achieved the opposite: they turned, us, ordinary people, into symbols of a struggle against lawlessness. This is not our achievement. It is theirs.”
As the second trial against Mr Khodorkovsky went on, its absurdity became more and more pronounced. In 2003, he was charged with underpaying taxes on a vast scale, and two years later was convicted and imprisoned. He was due for release in 2011. The second case tried to prove that the very object that Mr Khodorkovsky had been convicted of underpaying taxes on—the oil—was stolen in its entirety. Even some Russian officials who testified in the trial admitted that this was absurd. Yet the prosecution is demanding that Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev spend another six years in jail.Nobody, as Mr Khodorkovsky said today, would believe that he had stolen all the oil from his own company, even if he were to admit it. But nobody believes that a Moscow court would acquit him either. “Over these years they have begun to fear me more and to respect the law even less.” The Kremlin is right to fear Mr Khodorkovsky because his stand undermines the foundation of a system held together by corruption and the supremacy of the state—with the security services as its guardian—over an individual.
How long can such a system last? Earlier this week Mr Khodorkovsky tried to answer this question in an interview [link in English] given to Novaya Gazeta, a courageous and critical newspaper. In it, he argued that crisis will hit in about 2015, when the sinking potential of an unmodernised economy rubs up against the greed of the bureaucracy on the one hand and the material expectations of the population on the other. Exactly, in fact, what brought down the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
Mr Khodorkovsky was nearly 25 years old in 1987 when Andrei Sakharov, Russia’s dissident nuclear scientist, was released from his exile. Describing the sense of optimism shared by his generation back then, today Mr Khodorkovsky said, “Our country was living on the hope of freedom, hope that we would be able to achieve happiness for ourselves and for our children…The responsibility for why this hope was not realised all the way, and not for everybody, probably lies on our entire generation, myself included.”
When Mr Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint aboard his private jet in 2003, he was merely one of Russia’s richest oligarchs. Many of his compatriots hated him. His company, Yukos, was no more than just the country’s largest oil producer. But after seven years in jail (fortunately without torture and humiliation) he has become one of Russia’s most significant and dignified figures. Although, unlike Mr Sakharov, he is no dissident or human-rights fighter—his talents are different, and he belongs to a different time—in some ways he is as much a symbol as the scientist was in his day.Mr Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 and the destruction of his Yukos oil company have changed Russian history, and continue to determine it. Today's short speech was clinically accurate in its description of where, seven years later, Russia and he have ended up.
As Mr Khodorkovsky said, the people who put him and Platon Lebedev, his business partner, in prison wanted to show that they are above the law and will always get their way. “So far, they have achieved the opposite: they turned, us, ordinary people, into symbols of a struggle against lawlessness. This is not our achievement. It is theirs.”
As the second trial against Mr Khodorkovsky went on, its absurdity became more and more pronounced. In 2003, he was charged with underpaying taxes on a vast scale, and two years later was convicted and imprisoned. He was due for release in 2011. The second case tried to prove that the very object that Mr Khodorkovsky had been convicted of underpaying taxes on—the oil—was stolen in its entirety. Even some Russian officials who testified in the trial admitted that this was absurd. Yet the prosecution is demanding that Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev spend another six years in jail.Nobody, as Mr Khodorkovsky said today, would believe that he had stolen all the oil from his own company, even if he were to admit it. But nobody believes that a Moscow court would acquit him either. “Over these years they have begun to fear me more and to respect the law even less.” The Kremlin is right to fear Mr Khodorkovsky because his stand undermines the foundation of a system held together by corruption and the supremacy of the state—with the security services as its guardian—over an individual.
How long can such a system last? Earlier this week Mr Khodorkovsky tried to answer this question in an interview [link in English] given to Novaya Gazeta, a courageous and critical newspaper. In it, he argued that crisis will hit in about 2015, when the sinking potential of an unmodernised economy rubs up against the greed of the bureaucracy on the one hand and the material expectations of the population on the other. Exactly, in fact, what brought down the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
Mr Khodorkovsky was nearly 25 years old in 1987 when Andrei Sakharov, Russia’s dissident nuclear scientist, was released from his exile. Describing the sense of optimism shared by his generation back then, today Mr Khodorkovsky said, “Our country was living on the hope of freedom, hope that we would be able to achieve happiness for ourselves and for our children…The responsibility for why this hope was not realised all the way, and not for everybody, probably lies on our entire generation, myself included.”
His trial has also become a trial of the political system created by Vladimir Putin, the former president and current prime minister. Nobody listening to Mr Khodorkovsky today doubted him when he said: “I am not at all an ideal person, but I am a person of an idea. For me, as for anybody, it is hard to live in jail, and I do not want to die there. But if I have to, I will not hesitate. The things I believe in are worth dying for. I think I have proven this.”
“What do you believe in?” he asked his opponents rhetorically. That the bosses are always right? Do you believe in money? In the impunity of the “system”? The judge will deliver his verdict on the two defendants on December 15th. But Mr Khodorkovsky has already delivered his
“What do you believe in?” he asked his opponents rhetorically. That the bosses are always right? Do you believe in money? In the impunity of the “system”? The judge will deliver his verdict on the two defendants on December 15th. But Mr Khodorkovsky has already delivered his
Final Statement in Meshchansky Court
FINAL STATEMENT OF MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY
Read in Meshchansky Court in Moscow on April 11, 2005
Your Honor, honorable court, honorable attendees!
I am a Russian patriot, and therefore first and foremost look upon what is taking place around YUKOS, my partners, and me personally from the point of view of the interests and values of my country.
Let us recall how this all started. Nearly 2 years ago, they arrested my friend Lebedev in the hospital. I remained in Russia after Platon’s arrest, although friends and lawyers categorically recommended that I not do this. I behaved as I did because I love Russia and I believe in its future as a strong and law-governed state.
Although I made a conscious choice – to remain in the country and not to hide from anybody, a year and a half ago armed people in masks arrested me. Since that time, they are holding me under guard, refusing to release me on bail, against the pledges of dozens of the most respected citizens of our country: leading authors, scholars, actors, public figures.
A year ago began the orderly and systematic destruction of YUKOS. The entire country knows how, by whom, and why the scandalous “YUKOS case” was organized. It was contrived by certain influential people with the aim of taking for themselves the most prosperous oil company of Russian, or more precisely, the revenues from its financial flows.
When they say that the “YUKOS case” has led to a strengthening of the role of the state in the economy, this evokes bitter laughter from me. Those people who are busily plundering YUKOS’ assets today do not actually have anything to do with the Russian State and its interests. They are simply dirty, self-serving bureaucrats and nothing else.
The entire country knows why I was locked up in jail: so that I wouldn’t interfere with the plunder of the company. In so doing, the people who organized the persecution of me personally tried to frighten the power and society with my mythical political ambitions. They openly deceived the President, other representatives of the top political leadership of the country, and Russian society as a whole. I am convinced that there is nothing hidden in our globalized,
transparent world that doesn’t become visible with time. And the court of history will put everything in its place. It is no secret to anyone that the criminal cases fabricated with respect to me and other YUKOS managers caused a great deal of harm to the domestic economy. Capital flight from the country has increased by a factor of 6, investor confidence – Russian and foreign – in our Motherland as a place to invest has been undermined. Oh well, let the full brunt of responsibility for this fall on those who engineered my arrest and are now trying to send me to a camp for a long time.
The whole world knows that the “Khodorkovsky case” that was planned by individual representatives of the home-grown criminal bureaucracy has dealt a grave blow to the reputation of Russia, of the Russian power. But nothing could stop the greedy people who had decided, no matter what, to appropriate the principal enterprises and assets of YUKOS – even the direct harm they have already inflicted and are inflicting every day on our country, our statehood.
All of Russia knows that the organs of the Prosecutor General’s Office never were able to prove even a single one of the charges leveled at me. Attempts to impute any crimes whatsoever to me turned into an outright farce, and even the prosecution witnesses essentially testified in my favor.
The court has now been presented with all the documents, all the witnesses have been questioned. And what do we see as the result? Two years of searches, interrogations of hundreds, if not thousands, of employees, the taking of hostages by way of arresting people who are not guilty of anything, including women with small children – and the prosecution was still not able to find a single document, not a single fact, not one testimony that would corroborate the existence of some kind of clandestine illicit plans, sinister secret instructions, underground meetings, i.e. nothing that would speak of criminal activity, of the existence of organized groups in the criminal sense of this word.
Likewise there is not a single document – let me emphasize, not a single one – just like there is not one word from a witness, that would point to my illicit activities, or to me and Platon receiving funds from criminal sources. Two years of inhuman labors by the Prosecutor General’s Office – and a zero result!
What is there? Legal, public documents about property, about public, official transactions, about civil-law disputes, the minutes of official operational meetings, which it is easy to obtain with even a minimal ability to use the Internet.
What else has the prosecution revealed to Russian society and the world? The fabrications of the procurators, not proven by anything or anybody, evidence only of their own criminal mentality.
I simply have nothing to defend myself from in an independent court: what these public documents of companies prove – namely, normal, stable operational activities with the aim of producing output, providing services, and obtaining legal profits – is not punishable, but on the contrary, is welcomed in all countries with a market economy, and, needless to say, is officially welcomed in Russia. In order to convince oneself of this, it is enough to acquaint oneself with the speeches of our President over the past 5 years.
What the procurators have concocted about organized groups, criminal intent, etc. is not corroborated by anybody or anything at all.
The court is essentially being asked to say that the mere creation, management, and ownership of a successful business are proof of a crime. One could do it that way, but this is, first and foremost, absolutely illegal, and second, is in contradiction to the normal vector of the development of the country. The law does not require one to contest cheap criminal pulp fiction pieced together by a group of literati from the procuracy. But in my opening statement I promised to prove the unlawfulness of the charges, which I have done with the help of my lawyers, although I was not obligated to by our Constitution, which has not yet been repealed, and the presumption of innocence established by it.
I do not want to talk about legality any more now – the lawyers have addressed that. I want to talk now about justice – a category that always has been, and remains, most important for Russia, for the Russian people. I will do without references to documents – these references were sounded in the defense speeches, and they will be in the written text of my address.
Apatit
The prosecution asserted that shares in Apatit had been stolen, that is received without payment.
All of the documents presented to the court unambiguously say the opposite.
The state received for this block of shares the price that it, the state, had itself established. Why such a price and not another one is a question not to us, but to the state. Although I do have my theory about an answer. At that time, Apatit was lying in ruins and was a constant source of social tension for the region. Therefore, the authorities were glad to give the enterprise to an owner who would save Apatit and would prevent a hungry and cold insurrection by its workers.
We succeeded in doing both the one and the other.
The documents have also confirmed that the money for investments was paid in by the investor, and was returned – only partially at that – by the private enterprise Apatit itself. And it was returned publicly, as reflected in the reports approved by its Board of Directors, the general meeting. The state received the price in full. And nobody is arguing with this.
Apatit, upon which lay the responsibility to build, purchase, design, i.e. to utilize the investment money, fulfilled or exceeded the indicators indicated in the terms of the competition – in production volumes, in preserving the number of workers of the enterprise, in preserving the production plant, in the social program – with lower expenditures and by way of other measures that had been indicated in the investment program. This brought profits to the shareholders, revenues to the region and the state, and a stable wage to the workers. Generally speaking, for preventing a social explosion one should get a medal, not an indictment. And today, this is a successfully operating and flourishing enterprise.
The NIUIF institute
The same kind of charges – and the same loose ends. Once again, the state itself adopts a decision on the sale price, and the price is paid in full to the state. The court has seen all the papers. At the same time, the price is absolutely fair if we proceed from the political and economic realities of those years.
The private enterprise AO NIUIF itself adopts a decision to change the direction and timetable for using the money of the investors. And once again, such a decision is adopted publicly, and is reflected in the reports approved by the Board of Directors and the general meeting; it returns the money. Again, what does the state – which has received what was owed it in full – have to do with this?
The Director-General of the Institute confirmed in court that the investment program was carried out with a change in the timetable and the measures, and that the objectives of the program were attained. The changes were intelligent and stemmed from market demand for the services of the institute. It is obvious that had the director acted in any other way, the institute would have become bankrupt long ago, it would have been sold for debts and turned into yet another night club, especially since the location, as the representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office said,
is superb.
The results of the cooperation between the institute and the investor are well-known: already 10 years from the moment of privatization, NIUIF, its assets are carrying out the function of a multiple-industry scientific center, and not that of a construction site. There is a production plant, graduate students are being trained, industrial orders are carried out. Anybody who cares to can easily see this for himself.
In a country where the Academy of Sciences, if things continue to go as they are going, will eventually become a commercial real estate office, there are not that many such private scientific centers working for the interests of branches of industry. Is it just to prosecute someone for preserving the scientific base of the country? I think that neither the law nor justice demand this.
Apatit – trading policy
Without any justification whatsoever for doing so, the Prosecutor General’s Office has stuck its nose into the trading activities of the private enterprise Apatit, imposing upon it its own subjective notions about correct trading policy, effectively attempting to replace the owners and the authorized – from the point of view of Russian legislation – management bodies of this company.
Although I have been charged for the years 1999-2002, when I took no part whatsoever in the activities of Apatit, working, as the whole country knows, at YUKOS-Moscow, and subsequently being a member of the Board of Directors of YUKOS, and not of Apatit, nevertheless, I now know that none of the members of the Board of Directors of Apatit, including the representative of the state, and none of the shareholders of Apatit, including Western and Russian investors, nor the anti-monopoly organs of our country, who audited the activities of Apatit numerous times, as the court knows, made any claims against the managers of Apatit with respect to their trading policy.
Indeed, it would be surprising if they had – under their leadership, an enterprise that had been loss-making until the year 1995 became and remains profitable, pays dividends, taxes, and expands production.
Perhaps if Apatit were managed by workers of the Procuracy-General or by the people who stand behind it, things might have been even better, but to the best of my knowledge, they are not offering their management skills publicly as of yet. But what does any of this have to do with the charges leveled against me and Platon Lebedev?
The representatives of the owner of Apatit (the Board of Directors) and the hareholders at general meetings practically unanimously approved precisely this trading policy, precisely these reports. Nor do they retract their position today, either. I don’t even mention the opinion of the independent auditor invited by Apatit – the world-renowned, universally respected company PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose services have often been used by both Gazprom and the Central Bank of Russia. The opinion of the auditor likewise fully contradicts the notions of the Procuracy-General. What right do the procurators have, without knowing a thing about business
in general and this specific business in particular, to impose on the court, on the owners of Apatit, their subjective, erroneous judgment, one that contradicts the objective state of affairs, as well as the opinion of the owners of the enterprise, its Board of Directors, managers, and auditors? To present the illiterate reports of prosecutors on what from the point of view of economics and the law are incorrectly put questions?
I never interfered in the activities of the Prosecutor General’s Office and do not intend to interfere in the future. And I therefore hope that the prosecutors will do me and the entire country the same courtesy, and stop sticking their noses into the process of managing industrial enterprises. And especially those that have learned how to work well without their interference.
Most
Once again an empty charge of transferring the funds of YUKOS and two other companies to enterprises of the Most Group without consideration.
The court has been provided with contracts – that had intentionally been concealed by the prosecution and were found by the defense – according to which this money was provided. The contracts are public, and they prescribe the return of the money.
The money, it turns out, was transferred in exchange, in part, for the interest-bearing promissory notes of the Most bank, one of the largest commercial banks of Russia at that moment. That is, the prosecution intentionally attempted to conceal these contracts, knowing that they clearly show an ordinary placement of the temporarily surplus funds of enterprises. The contracts are official, not challenged by anybody. All of the funds provided under these contracts to enterprises of the Most Group were returned by the borrowers. All of this, once again, is available on the Internet.
By the way, knowing this, the Prosecutor General’s Office did not make claims against the managers of these enterprises and on this subject, nor, in fact, did the owners, either.
After all, I was a shareholder in YUKOS – a person more interested than anyone else in the success of the company – in other words, in there not being any theft and misappropriation. So it is beyond comprehension how someone could have invented the charge that I had misappropriated my own money.
Not carrying out a court decision by an official of a commercial organization.
There never existed, and there does not exist, a decision of an arbitrage court with respect to the Wallton company that has not been carried out. And a court decision that was not carried out with respect to a second enterprise – Volna – appeared in the year 2004 exclusively through the efforts of the Procuracy-General. It was precisely the Prosecutor General’s Office that attained – using ways and means that only it comprehends – the annulment of the amicable agreement between the Russian Federal Property Fund and Volna, when Platon and I were already in jail.
Neither I nor Lebedev have ever been employees of these organizations. The Procuracy-General itself has confirmed this to the court.
Wallton existed until the year 2002, and Volna – again, as became known to the court – exists to the present time, i.e. more than 10 years. Claims were not made of either the organizations themselves or their workers. This is all now known for certain to the court. So what was maliciously not carried out and by whom? What right do they have to charge us?
Now I will proceed to the modern-day analogue of the notorious Stalinist Article 58 -
Corporate tax evasion.
This is a pure lie from start to finish.
I will remind you that our law prohibits the distortion of reporting, or, in simple terms, fraud.
And this is just. If the authorities knew everything, then everything else is the problem of the authorities, and not of the taxpayers. I am charged with evading the payment of taxes from an organization by way of transferring interest-bearing YUKOS promissory notes. The absurdity of these charges has been established in court. The court has received all the documents confirming the absence of this crime.
In granting reduced payments, the authorized state bodies of the ZATO [Closed Territorial-Administrative Formation] did not merely know that the companies would not have terminals for the transshipment of oil on the territory of the ZATO, they directly indicated in the decision of the local Duma that the companies’ activities should not involve the production and raw-materials resources of the ZATO. These same state bodies issued the companies licenses for trading in oil products – but without the right to unload and store them.
The reporting submitted to the tax inspectorate was monitored during the course of audits and is corroborated by all of the witnesses questioned in court – both prosecution witnesses and defense witnesses. Thus, the state bodies had a complete and accurate picture of the activities of the enterprises in the ZATO, which, by the way, the representatives of the state bodies corroborated.
The same thing concerns the payment of part of the taxes with promissory notes, which was not only done on the basis of decisions of the state bodies. We have seen these decisions in court, and the tax and financial services of the city and the district monitoring bodies knew full well of their existence and content, which can be seen directly from their reports and official documentation.
By the way, the witnesses from the ZATO assert that they informed the Ministry of Finance of the RF as well.
Consequently, there was no and could be no distortion of reporting that would deceive state bodies as to the form in which tax payments were made – and as a consequence, could be regarded as a form of tax evasion.
The authorities adopted a lawful decision, the powers granted reduced payments and the right to make a part of tax payments in promissory notes, the authorities monitored the carrying out of their decisions within the framework of various audits. No one in the given instance was deceiving the authorities – all the documentary proofs of this exist.
That decisions of this kind were adopted by the ZATO authorities not in isolation, but with the understanding and approval of the federal authorities, is also corroborated by letters addressed to the local authorities, by articles on the press by federal officials, and by the testimony of witnesses and specialists questioned in court, who told of the practice accepted in Russia of granting reduced payments to intermediaries, as well as of the lawfulness of paying taxes with non-monetary means in the year 1999 into local budgets, inasmuch as the Tax and Budget Codes were not in accord with one another, while the Constitution and an international treaty signed by Russia were in the given instance and remain on the side of the rights of the local authorities.
What do the charges of tax evasion by way of including knowingly false information in reporting have to do with any of this? What, were not the YUKOS promissory notes redeemed?
Redeemed, and with interest. Budgets of all levels received their money in full.
And the charge of embezzling funds by way of the refunding of overpaid taxes paid with promissory notes?
In the documents of the financial bodies themselves about the refund of the verpayment that are in the case materials is written in black on white: “overpayment… refunded with cashed promissory note.” Who was deceiving anyone?
Furthermore, the prosecution does not contest the fact of the overpayment with promissory notes, while the fact of the redeeming of the promissory notes is corroborated by payment orders, and by the official documentation of the financial bodies, and by the official documentation of the maker of the promissory note, and by witnesses. That is, all of the promissory notes were not only redeemed, but redeemed with interest. The refund, however, took place without interest, of
course. It is obvious that the budget was refunding, and it was refunding someone else’s property, and moreover it was refunding in part, and not in full, and, of course, on the basis of a decision of the authorities, i.e. the owner, who knew both the form in which the taxes had been paid and the sum of money actually received.
I don’t even mention that not a single document, not a single witness, of course, mentioned me or Lebedev at all in connection with this activity. Not a single kopek, of course, was received by either me or Lebedev from these operations. Everything else is the fantasy of the authors of the criminal pulp novel. Once again, all the materials are on the Internet, and anybody can convince himself of this.
But what particularly galls me is the mere fact that a bunch of officials are aggressively making illegitimate claims of me and of Lebedev, with no grounds whatsoever, merely because this, apparently, will help their careers. This is unconscionable and illegal and causes harm to the honor of the country; it undermines confidence in the authorities.
Finally, about personal tax evasion in the years 1998-1999.
I am being charged with falsification of or refusal to hand over tax reporting. I want to bring to your attention that there are not that many people in Russia who have been independently declaring income since as far back as 1994. I did this. You have seen all of the relevant papers in court.
The prosecution declared that there was evidence that I received the money in 1998-1999 not from clients for providing them with consulting services, but from Rosprom or YUKOS-Moscow as an employee. I waited for this widely advertised evidence for a year and a half, and I waited in a not very comfortable prison cell, at that. Where is it? It did not exist then, and it does not exist now.
There is no information that this money was paid to me by Rosprom or YUKOS-Moscow, there is no information about mutual obligations between myself and these organizations stipulated in a labor contract. There is nothing but the assertions of the prosecutors. The law requires evidence from them, not from me, although I was prepared to tell the court about the essence of my consulting services, to explain why consulting by internationally recognized business leaders costs as much as I was paid, or more. But it would seem that legal arguments, just like considerations of common sense, are of no interest whatsoever to the prosecution.
I understand them; all in all, they do not have need of evidence. I refused to give the names of my clients, because people are afraid – and have every reason to be afraid – of persecution on the part of the Procuracy-General and the tax service. But so far, nobody has repealed Article 49 of the Constitution of the RF about the presumption of innocence. And I hope they never will.
I did not start to tell about my philanthropic activities in detail in court; its scale is now known to just about everybody – it is billions of rubles a year – so from the point of view of ordinary human reason, to accuse me of purposefully concealing 1 million dollars per year is quite funny.
I received exactly as much as I needed for the life of my family. I could have earned and received a lot more, but I simply do not and did not have such needs.
Unlike those modest businessmen and business-bureaucrats who are behind the YUKOS case and the corresponding actions of the Procuracy-General, I have no yachts, palaces, race cars, or football clubs. Even the house that was photographed for Komsomolskaya Pravda is not mine.
Mine is much more modest, and the photographers simply didn’t notice it – it is too small against the background of the gargantuan tract houses along the Rublevo-Uspensky Highway. And I don’t have any property abroad. You can ask the security services – they know this perfectly well now.
I was not one of those people who deliberately and cynically demonstrate a barbaric culture of consumption to the impoverished people of our rich country. I was an improper oligarch.
Apparently, this is why the power not only took away YUKOS, but is also holding me in jail going on two years already.
As has already been declared by me earlier, as the result of the sale of Yugansk [Yuganskneftegaz] at a sham auction, in accordance with agreements entered into among my partners in Group MENATEP 7 years ago already, 59.5% of the shares in GML transferred to a new trust to the benefit of Leonid Nevzlin within the framework of the appropriate legal procedure. What is of fundamental importance for me is that this is equivalent to my renunciation, without compensation, of any control whatsoever over the business and of any benefit that I might have received from the companies of Group MENATEP.
I do not have any large property left today, I have stopped being a businessman, I am no longer one of the super-rich people.
All that I have is an awareness that I am in the right and a will to be free. And also my business reputation, which allows me to raise funds for philanthropic projects. Projects from which tens of thousands of Russians receive tangible benefits – from veterans and invalids to students at the schools and gymnasia of Russia.
I had, and have, my own understanding of a worthy path for the country’s development. This path is not connected with the hopeless effort to catch up with the developed countries at the expense of trading in raw materials, but with talented youth, who want to live and work in the Motherland, in their own country, in their own cultural milieu, in a free, democratic, civil society.
I am proud of the work that I was able to accomplish over the past 15 years. It was not I who broke up the Soviet Union, it was not I who destroyed Soviet industry. My fate was to rebuild this industry. These are dozens and hundreds of enterprises. Now they are all working for the good of Russia. I take pride in this, even though I am no longer a co-owner.
I take pride in the fact that in the most difficult time for the country – when oil cost not $54 per barrel, like today, but $8.50 per barrel, when there weren’t any gold and foreign currency reserves worth hundreds of billions and stabilization funds groaning under the weight of easy money – I came into the oil industry and rebuilt a company that in 2004 – just before the beginning, or the end, of its evisceration – became the largest oil corporation of Russia, number one in the country in production and in refining, having pulled ahead even of Lukoil.
I take pride in the fact that I was one of the first in Russia to call for transparency in business.
We succeeded in making YUKOS into a transparent company and in bringing our business into the open. We thereby created standards of behavior for all Russian business. And if the shares of dozens of Russian companies are being traded on the world’s leading stock markets today, some small part of the credit for this is ours.
Yes, YUKOS has been ruined and eviscerated by our foes, by those who have locked me up in jail. Nevertheless, I consider that transparency and openness are the only way to freedom a corrupt government official, from bureaucratic abuse.
I have every reason to take pride in what I did as a public figure as well. The Federation of Internet Education created with my participation has trained 150 thousand high school teachers; we have created hundreds of computer classes in dozens of regions of Russia; together with leading colleges, we have implemented programs for training top-rank specialists in Tomsk, Moscow, and Samara. In addition to this, we have built dozens of “New Civilization” youth centers, sports complexes, swimming pools, and several lyceums for children who have lost their parents, including the Podmoskovny lyceum, where my father works. Driven by the desire to
see the country free and just, I supported independent mass media, as well as various political forces, as long as I had the chance to do so. I do not regret this one bit.
All of this was done by me not for popularity’s sake (before the arrest, few people knew anything much about the social programs I have named), but because this is what my conscience and my upbringing told me I should do. Because I consider this to be the proper and honest way to live.
I did my best to revive Russian industry, to create a civil society. I may have made some mistakes, I may have not done some things the way I should have, but I sincerely did seek to work for my country, for its welfare, and not to line my own pocket.
Everybody knows that I am not guilty of those crimes that I am being charged with. And I therefore do not intend to ask for leniency. It will be a disgrace for me and for my country if direct, barefaced deception of the court by the procurator is in essence regarded as lawful. It was a shock for me when the court and the lawyers made this clear to me. It is horrible if the country is convinced that the court is acting under the influence of officials from the Kremlin or the Prosecutor General’s Office.
I very much hope that the trial that ends today will help to change both the situation and public opinion. The public nature of the trial and the high degree of attention to it on the part of all of Russian society and of jurists throughout the world give every reason to think so. I have faith that my country, Russia, will be a country of justice and law. And this is why the court must rule on the basis of justice and on the basis of the law.
I am grateful to everyone who supported me in this difficult time, who helped me bear the hardship of prison, to live through the pillaging of a successful company to the creation of which I had devoted a significant portion of my life. Support from people of a wide range of views, generations, and professions has helped me to live through this, to rethink many things in my past, and to open a new page in my life. Hundreds, thousands of my colleagues have behaved honestly despite the hard pressure and direct threats on the part of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Many of my colleagues have been thrown in jail, essentially turned into hostages, but they have preserved their human dignity, and continue to walk the path of truth today. Thank you for everything, I am with you, I will always support you!
Thank you to everyone – politicians, journalists, cultural figures, scientists, and businessmen – who was not afraid to speak out openly in my defense. My friends, we are fighting for justice, and we will surely attain the truth! I also want to thank the tens of thousands of ordinary Russian who have supported me with their letters. In the sacred words of the Gospel, they have “chosen that good part.”
I want to express particular gratitude to my parents, who have endured everything, the whole torrent of meanness and filth that has poured out upon them. It has not been easy for these elderly people, not in the best of health, to take all this. Thank you, my dear ones, and forgive me for having brought all this worry and distress upon you.
Thank you to my wife, who has truly carried herself like a comrade-in-arms, like a real Decembrist’s wife. To all the members of my family I want to say that I love you!
I have three young children, and I want to give them a good education. I want to work, and I will work – in a new capacity now, not as an owner of an oil company – for the good of my country and of my people. No matter how the court rules.
I thank you for your attention.
Read in Meshchansky Court in Moscow on April 11, 2005
Your Honor, honorable court, honorable attendees!
I am a Russian patriot, and therefore first and foremost look upon what is taking place around YUKOS, my partners, and me personally from the point of view of the interests and values of my country.
Let us recall how this all started. Nearly 2 years ago, they arrested my friend Lebedev in the hospital. I remained in Russia after Platon’s arrest, although friends and lawyers categorically recommended that I not do this. I behaved as I did because I love Russia and I believe in its future as a strong and law-governed state.
Although I made a conscious choice – to remain in the country and not to hide from anybody, a year and a half ago armed people in masks arrested me. Since that time, they are holding me under guard, refusing to release me on bail, against the pledges of dozens of the most respected citizens of our country: leading authors, scholars, actors, public figures.
A year ago began the orderly and systematic destruction of YUKOS. The entire country knows how, by whom, and why the scandalous “YUKOS case” was organized. It was contrived by certain influential people with the aim of taking for themselves the most prosperous oil company of Russian, or more precisely, the revenues from its financial flows.
When they say that the “YUKOS case” has led to a strengthening of the role of the state in the economy, this evokes bitter laughter from me. Those people who are busily plundering YUKOS’ assets today do not actually have anything to do with the Russian State and its interests. They are simply dirty, self-serving bureaucrats and nothing else.
The entire country knows why I was locked up in jail: so that I wouldn’t interfere with the plunder of the company. In so doing, the people who organized the persecution of me personally tried to frighten the power and society with my mythical political ambitions. They openly deceived the President, other representatives of the top political leadership of the country, and Russian society as a whole. I am convinced that there is nothing hidden in our globalized,
transparent world that doesn’t become visible with time. And the court of history will put everything in its place. It is no secret to anyone that the criminal cases fabricated with respect to me and other YUKOS managers caused a great deal of harm to the domestic economy. Capital flight from the country has increased by a factor of 6, investor confidence – Russian and foreign – in our Motherland as a place to invest has been undermined. Oh well, let the full brunt of responsibility for this fall on those who engineered my arrest and are now trying to send me to a camp for a long time.
The whole world knows that the “Khodorkovsky case” that was planned by individual representatives of the home-grown criminal bureaucracy has dealt a grave blow to the reputation of Russia, of the Russian power. But nothing could stop the greedy people who had decided, no matter what, to appropriate the principal enterprises and assets of YUKOS – even the direct harm they have already inflicted and are inflicting every day on our country, our statehood.
All of Russia knows that the organs of the Prosecutor General’s Office never were able to prove even a single one of the charges leveled at me. Attempts to impute any crimes whatsoever to me turned into an outright farce, and even the prosecution witnesses essentially testified in my favor.
The court has now been presented with all the documents, all the witnesses have been questioned. And what do we see as the result? Two years of searches, interrogations of hundreds, if not thousands, of employees, the taking of hostages by way of arresting people who are not guilty of anything, including women with small children – and the prosecution was still not able to find a single document, not a single fact, not one testimony that would corroborate the existence of some kind of clandestine illicit plans, sinister secret instructions, underground meetings, i.e. nothing that would speak of criminal activity, of the existence of organized groups in the criminal sense of this word.
Likewise there is not a single document – let me emphasize, not a single one – just like there is not one word from a witness, that would point to my illicit activities, or to me and Platon receiving funds from criminal sources. Two years of inhuman labors by the Prosecutor General’s Office – and a zero result!
What is there? Legal, public documents about property, about public, official transactions, about civil-law disputes, the minutes of official operational meetings, which it is easy to obtain with even a minimal ability to use the Internet.
What else has the prosecution revealed to Russian society and the world? The fabrications of the procurators, not proven by anything or anybody, evidence only of their own criminal mentality.
I simply have nothing to defend myself from in an independent court: what these public documents of companies prove – namely, normal, stable operational activities with the aim of producing output, providing services, and obtaining legal profits – is not punishable, but on the contrary, is welcomed in all countries with a market economy, and, needless to say, is officially welcomed in Russia. In order to convince oneself of this, it is enough to acquaint oneself with the speeches of our President over the past 5 years.
What the procurators have concocted about organized groups, criminal intent, etc. is not corroborated by anybody or anything at all.
The court is essentially being asked to say that the mere creation, management, and ownership of a successful business are proof of a crime. One could do it that way, but this is, first and foremost, absolutely illegal, and second, is in contradiction to the normal vector of the development of the country. The law does not require one to contest cheap criminal pulp fiction pieced together by a group of literati from the procuracy. But in my opening statement I promised to prove the unlawfulness of the charges, which I have done with the help of my lawyers, although I was not obligated to by our Constitution, which has not yet been repealed, and the presumption of innocence established by it.
I do not want to talk about legality any more now – the lawyers have addressed that. I want to talk now about justice – a category that always has been, and remains, most important for Russia, for the Russian people. I will do without references to documents – these references were sounded in the defense speeches, and they will be in the written text of my address.
Apatit
The prosecution asserted that shares in Apatit had been stolen, that is received without payment.
All of the documents presented to the court unambiguously say the opposite.
The state received for this block of shares the price that it, the state, had itself established. Why such a price and not another one is a question not to us, but to the state. Although I do have my theory about an answer. At that time, Apatit was lying in ruins and was a constant source of social tension for the region. Therefore, the authorities were glad to give the enterprise to an owner who would save Apatit and would prevent a hungry and cold insurrection by its workers.
We succeeded in doing both the one and the other.
The documents have also confirmed that the money for investments was paid in by the investor, and was returned – only partially at that – by the private enterprise Apatit itself. And it was returned publicly, as reflected in the reports approved by its Board of Directors, the general meeting. The state received the price in full. And nobody is arguing with this.
Apatit, upon which lay the responsibility to build, purchase, design, i.e. to utilize the investment money, fulfilled or exceeded the indicators indicated in the terms of the competition – in production volumes, in preserving the number of workers of the enterprise, in preserving the production plant, in the social program – with lower expenditures and by way of other measures that had been indicated in the investment program. This brought profits to the shareholders, revenues to the region and the state, and a stable wage to the workers. Generally speaking, for preventing a social explosion one should get a medal, not an indictment. And today, this is a successfully operating and flourishing enterprise.
The NIUIF institute
The same kind of charges – and the same loose ends. Once again, the state itself adopts a decision on the sale price, and the price is paid in full to the state. The court has seen all the papers. At the same time, the price is absolutely fair if we proceed from the political and economic realities of those years.
The private enterprise AO NIUIF itself adopts a decision to change the direction and timetable for using the money of the investors. And once again, such a decision is adopted publicly, and is reflected in the reports approved by the Board of Directors and the general meeting; it returns the money. Again, what does the state – which has received what was owed it in full – have to do with this?
The Director-General of the Institute confirmed in court that the investment program was carried out with a change in the timetable and the measures, and that the objectives of the program were attained. The changes were intelligent and stemmed from market demand for the services of the institute. It is obvious that had the director acted in any other way, the institute would have become bankrupt long ago, it would have been sold for debts and turned into yet another night club, especially since the location, as the representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office said,
is superb.
The results of the cooperation between the institute and the investor are well-known: already 10 years from the moment of privatization, NIUIF, its assets are carrying out the function of a multiple-industry scientific center, and not that of a construction site. There is a production plant, graduate students are being trained, industrial orders are carried out. Anybody who cares to can easily see this for himself.
In a country where the Academy of Sciences, if things continue to go as they are going, will eventually become a commercial real estate office, there are not that many such private scientific centers working for the interests of branches of industry. Is it just to prosecute someone for preserving the scientific base of the country? I think that neither the law nor justice demand this.
Apatit – trading policy
Without any justification whatsoever for doing so, the Prosecutor General’s Office has stuck its nose into the trading activities of the private enterprise Apatit, imposing upon it its own subjective notions about correct trading policy, effectively attempting to replace the owners and the authorized – from the point of view of Russian legislation – management bodies of this company.
Although I have been charged for the years 1999-2002, when I took no part whatsoever in the activities of Apatit, working, as the whole country knows, at YUKOS-Moscow, and subsequently being a member of the Board of Directors of YUKOS, and not of Apatit, nevertheless, I now know that none of the members of the Board of Directors of Apatit, including the representative of the state, and none of the shareholders of Apatit, including Western and Russian investors, nor the anti-monopoly organs of our country, who audited the activities of Apatit numerous times, as the court knows, made any claims against the managers of Apatit with respect to their trading policy.
Indeed, it would be surprising if they had – under their leadership, an enterprise that had been loss-making until the year 1995 became and remains profitable, pays dividends, taxes, and expands production.
Perhaps if Apatit were managed by workers of the Procuracy-General or by the people who stand behind it, things might have been even better, but to the best of my knowledge, they are not offering their management skills publicly as of yet. But what does any of this have to do with the charges leveled against me and Platon Lebedev?
The representatives of the owner of Apatit (the Board of Directors) and the hareholders at general meetings practically unanimously approved precisely this trading policy, precisely these reports. Nor do they retract their position today, either. I don’t even mention the opinion of the independent auditor invited by Apatit – the world-renowned, universally respected company PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose services have often been used by both Gazprom and the Central Bank of Russia. The opinion of the auditor likewise fully contradicts the notions of the Procuracy-General. What right do the procurators have, without knowing a thing about business
in general and this specific business in particular, to impose on the court, on the owners of Apatit, their subjective, erroneous judgment, one that contradicts the objective state of affairs, as well as the opinion of the owners of the enterprise, its Board of Directors, managers, and auditors? To present the illiterate reports of prosecutors on what from the point of view of economics and the law are incorrectly put questions?
I never interfered in the activities of the Prosecutor General’s Office and do not intend to interfere in the future. And I therefore hope that the prosecutors will do me and the entire country the same courtesy, and stop sticking their noses into the process of managing industrial enterprises. And especially those that have learned how to work well without their interference.
Most
Once again an empty charge of transferring the funds of YUKOS and two other companies to enterprises of the Most Group without consideration.
The court has been provided with contracts – that had intentionally been concealed by the prosecution and were found by the defense – according to which this money was provided. The contracts are public, and they prescribe the return of the money.
The money, it turns out, was transferred in exchange, in part, for the interest-bearing promissory notes of the Most bank, one of the largest commercial banks of Russia at that moment. That is, the prosecution intentionally attempted to conceal these contracts, knowing that they clearly show an ordinary placement of the temporarily surplus funds of enterprises. The contracts are official, not challenged by anybody. All of the funds provided under these contracts to enterprises of the Most Group were returned by the borrowers. All of this, once again, is available on the Internet.
By the way, knowing this, the Prosecutor General’s Office did not make claims against the managers of these enterprises and on this subject, nor, in fact, did the owners, either.
After all, I was a shareholder in YUKOS – a person more interested than anyone else in the success of the company – in other words, in there not being any theft and misappropriation. So it is beyond comprehension how someone could have invented the charge that I had misappropriated my own money.
Not carrying out a court decision by an official of a commercial organization.
There never existed, and there does not exist, a decision of an arbitrage court with respect to the Wallton company that has not been carried out. And a court decision that was not carried out with respect to a second enterprise – Volna – appeared in the year 2004 exclusively through the efforts of the Procuracy-General. It was precisely the Prosecutor General’s Office that attained – using ways and means that only it comprehends – the annulment of the amicable agreement between the Russian Federal Property Fund and Volna, when Platon and I were already in jail.
Neither I nor Lebedev have ever been employees of these organizations. The Procuracy-General itself has confirmed this to the court.
Wallton existed until the year 2002, and Volna – again, as became known to the court – exists to the present time, i.e. more than 10 years. Claims were not made of either the organizations themselves or their workers. This is all now known for certain to the court. So what was maliciously not carried out and by whom? What right do they have to charge us?
Now I will proceed to the modern-day analogue of the notorious Stalinist Article 58 -
Corporate tax evasion.
This is a pure lie from start to finish.
I will remind you that our law prohibits the distortion of reporting, or, in simple terms, fraud.
And this is just. If the authorities knew everything, then everything else is the problem of the authorities, and not of the taxpayers. I am charged with evading the payment of taxes from an organization by way of transferring interest-bearing YUKOS promissory notes. The absurdity of these charges has been established in court. The court has received all the documents confirming the absence of this crime.
In granting reduced payments, the authorized state bodies of the ZATO [Closed Territorial-Administrative Formation] did not merely know that the companies would not have terminals for the transshipment of oil on the territory of the ZATO, they directly indicated in the decision of the local Duma that the companies’ activities should not involve the production and raw-materials resources of the ZATO. These same state bodies issued the companies licenses for trading in oil products – but without the right to unload and store them.
The reporting submitted to the tax inspectorate was monitored during the course of audits and is corroborated by all of the witnesses questioned in court – both prosecution witnesses and defense witnesses. Thus, the state bodies had a complete and accurate picture of the activities of the enterprises in the ZATO, which, by the way, the representatives of the state bodies corroborated.
The same thing concerns the payment of part of the taxes with promissory notes, which was not only done on the basis of decisions of the state bodies. We have seen these decisions in court, and the tax and financial services of the city and the district monitoring bodies knew full well of their existence and content, which can be seen directly from their reports and official documentation.
By the way, the witnesses from the ZATO assert that they informed the Ministry of Finance of the RF as well.
Consequently, there was no and could be no distortion of reporting that would deceive state bodies as to the form in which tax payments were made – and as a consequence, could be regarded as a form of tax evasion.
The authorities adopted a lawful decision, the powers granted reduced payments and the right to make a part of tax payments in promissory notes, the authorities monitored the carrying out of their decisions within the framework of various audits. No one in the given instance was deceiving the authorities – all the documentary proofs of this exist.
That decisions of this kind were adopted by the ZATO authorities not in isolation, but with the understanding and approval of the federal authorities, is also corroborated by letters addressed to the local authorities, by articles on the press by federal officials, and by the testimony of witnesses and specialists questioned in court, who told of the practice accepted in Russia of granting reduced payments to intermediaries, as well as of the lawfulness of paying taxes with non-monetary means in the year 1999 into local budgets, inasmuch as the Tax and Budget Codes were not in accord with one another, while the Constitution and an international treaty signed by Russia were in the given instance and remain on the side of the rights of the local authorities.
What do the charges of tax evasion by way of including knowingly false information in reporting have to do with any of this? What, were not the YUKOS promissory notes redeemed?
Redeemed, and with interest. Budgets of all levels received their money in full.
And the charge of embezzling funds by way of the refunding of overpaid taxes paid with promissory notes?
In the documents of the financial bodies themselves about the refund of the verpayment that are in the case materials is written in black on white: “overpayment… refunded with cashed promissory note.” Who was deceiving anyone?
Furthermore, the prosecution does not contest the fact of the overpayment with promissory notes, while the fact of the redeeming of the promissory notes is corroborated by payment orders, and by the official documentation of the financial bodies, and by the official documentation of the maker of the promissory note, and by witnesses. That is, all of the promissory notes were not only redeemed, but redeemed with interest. The refund, however, took place without interest, of
course. It is obvious that the budget was refunding, and it was refunding someone else’s property, and moreover it was refunding in part, and not in full, and, of course, on the basis of a decision of the authorities, i.e. the owner, who knew both the form in which the taxes had been paid and the sum of money actually received.
I don’t even mention that not a single document, not a single witness, of course, mentioned me or Lebedev at all in connection with this activity. Not a single kopek, of course, was received by either me or Lebedev from these operations. Everything else is the fantasy of the authors of the criminal pulp novel. Once again, all the materials are on the Internet, and anybody can convince himself of this.
But what particularly galls me is the mere fact that a bunch of officials are aggressively making illegitimate claims of me and of Lebedev, with no grounds whatsoever, merely because this, apparently, will help their careers. This is unconscionable and illegal and causes harm to the honor of the country; it undermines confidence in the authorities.
Finally, about personal tax evasion in the years 1998-1999.
I am being charged with falsification of or refusal to hand over tax reporting. I want to bring to your attention that there are not that many people in Russia who have been independently declaring income since as far back as 1994. I did this. You have seen all of the relevant papers in court.
The prosecution declared that there was evidence that I received the money in 1998-1999 not from clients for providing them with consulting services, but from Rosprom or YUKOS-Moscow as an employee. I waited for this widely advertised evidence for a year and a half, and I waited in a not very comfortable prison cell, at that. Where is it? It did not exist then, and it does not exist now.
There is no information that this money was paid to me by Rosprom or YUKOS-Moscow, there is no information about mutual obligations between myself and these organizations stipulated in a labor contract. There is nothing but the assertions of the prosecutors. The law requires evidence from them, not from me, although I was prepared to tell the court about the essence of my consulting services, to explain why consulting by internationally recognized business leaders costs as much as I was paid, or more. But it would seem that legal arguments, just like considerations of common sense, are of no interest whatsoever to the prosecution.
I understand them; all in all, they do not have need of evidence. I refused to give the names of my clients, because people are afraid – and have every reason to be afraid – of persecution on the part of the Procuracy-General and the tax service. But so far, nobody has repealed Article 49 of the Constitution of the RF about the presumption of innocence. And I hope they never will.
I did not start to tell about my philanthropic activities in detail in court; its scale is now known to just about everybody – it is billions of rubles a year – so from the point of view of ordinary human reason, to accuse me of purposefully concealing 1 million dollars per year is quite funny.
I received exactly as much as I needed for the life of my family. I could have earned and received a lot more, but I simply do not and did not have such needs.
Unlike those modest businessmen and business-bureaucrats who are behind the YUKOS case and the corresponding actions of the Procuracy-General, I have no yachts, palaces, race cars, or football clubs. Even the house that was photographed for Komsomolskaya Pravda is not mine.
Mine is much more modest, and the photographers simply didn’t notice it – it is too small against the background of the gargantuan tract houses along the Rublevo-Uspensky Highway. And I don’t have any property abroad. You can ask the security services – they know this perfectly well now.
I was not one of those people who deliberately and cynically demonstrate a barbaric culture of consumption to the impoverished people of our rich country. I was an improper oligarch.
Apparently, this is why the power not only took away YUKOS, but is also holding me in jail going on two years already.
As has already been declared by me earlier, as the result of the sale of Yugansk [Yuganskneftegaz] at a sham auction, in accordance with agreements entered into among my partners in Group MENATEP 7 years ago already, 59.5% of the shares in GML transferred to a new trust to the benefit of Leonid Nevzlin within the framework of the appropriate legal procedure. What is of fundamental importance for me is that this is equivalent to my renunciation, without compensation, of any control whatsoever over the business and of any benefit that I might have received from the companies of Group MENATEP.
I do not have any large property left today, I have stopped being a businessman, I am no longer one of the super-rich people.
All that I have is an awareness that I am in the right and a will to be free. And also my business reputation, which allows me to raise funds for philanthropic projects. Projects from which tens of thousands of Russians receive tangible benefits – from veterans and invalids to students at the schools and gymnasia of Russia.
I had, and have, my own understanding of a worthy path for the country’s development. This path is not connected with the hopeless effort to catch up with the developed countries at the expense of trading in raw materials, but with talented youth, who want to live and work in the Motherland, in their own country, in their own cultural milieu, in a free, democratic, civil society.
I am proud of the work that I was able to accomplish over the past 15 years. It was not I who broke up the Soviet Union, it was not I who destroyed Soviet industry. My fate was to rebuild this industry. These are dozens and hundreds of enterprises. Now they are all working for the good of Russia. I take pride in this, even though I am no longer a co-owner.
I take pride in the fact that in the most difficult time for the country – when oil cost not $54 per barrel, like today, but $8.50 per barrel, when there weren’t any gold and foreign currency reserves worth hundreds of billions and stabilization funds groaning under the weight of easy money – I came into the oil industry and rebuilt a company that in 2004 – just before the beginning, or the end, of its evisceration – became the largest oil corporation of Russia, number one in the country in production and in refining, having pulled ahead even of Lukoil.
I take pride in the fact that I was one of the first in Russia to call for transparency in business.
We succeeded in making YUKOS into a transparent company and in bringing our business into the open. We thereby created standards of behavior for all Russian business. And if the shares of dozens of Russian companies are being traded on the world’s leading stock markets today, some small part of the credit for this is ours.
Yes, YUKOS has been ruined and eviscerated by our foes, by those who have locked me up in jail. Nevertheless, I consider that transparency and openness are the only way to freedom a corrupt government official, from bureaucratic abuse.
I have every reason to take pride in what I did as a public figure as well. The Federation of Internet Education created with my participation has trained 150 thousand high school teachers; we have created hundreds of computer classes in dozens of regions of Russia; together with leading colleges, we have implemented programs for training top-rank specialists in Tomsk, Moscow, and Samara. In addition to this, we have built dozens of “New Civilization” youth centers, sports complexes, swimming pools, and several lyceums for children who have lost their parents, including the Podmoskovny lyceum, where my father works. Driven by the desire to
see the country free and just, I supported independent mass media, as well as various political forces, as long as I had the chance to do so. I do not regret this one bit.
All of this was done by me not for popularity’s sake (before the arrest, few people knew anything much about the social programs I have named), but because this is what my conscience and my upbringing told me I should do. Because I consider this to be the proper and honest way to live.
I did my best to revive Russian industry, to create a civil society. I may have made some mistakes, I may have not done some things the way I should have, but I sincerely did seek to work for my country, for its welfare, and not to line my own pocket.
Everybody knows that I am not guilty of those crimes that I am being charged with. And I therefore do not intend to ask for leniency. It will be a disgrace for me and for my country if direct, barefaced deception of the court by the procurator is in essence regarded as lawful. It was a shock for me when the court and the lawyers made this clear to me. It is horrible if the country is convinced that the court is acting under the influence of officials from the Kremlin or the Prosecutor General’s Office.
I very much hope that the trial that ends today will help to change both the situation and public opinion. The public nature of the trial and the high degree of attention to it on the part of all of Russian society and of jurists throughout the world give every reason to think so. I have faith that my country, Russia, will be a country of justice and law. And this is why the court must rule on the basis of justice and on the basis of the law.
I am grateful to everyone who supported me in this difficult time, who helped me bear the hardship of prison, to live through the pillaging of a successful company to the creation of which I had devoted a significant portion of my life. Support from people of a wide range of views, generations, and professions has helped me to live through this, to rethink many things in my past, and to open a new page in my life. Hundreds, thousands of my colleagues have behaved honestly despite the hard pressure and direct threats on the part of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Many of my colleagues have been thrown in jail, essentially turned into hostages, but they have preserved their human dignity, and continue to walk the path of truth today. Thank you for everything, I am with you, I will always support you!
Thank you to everyone – politicians, journalists, cultural figures, scientists, and businessmen – who was not afraid to speak out openly in my defense. My friends, we are fighting for justice, and we will surely attain the truth! I also want to thank the tens of thousands of ordinary Russian who have supported me with their letters. In the sacred words of the Gospel, they have “chosen that good part.”
I want to express particular gratitude to my parents, who have endured everything, the whole torrent of meanness and filth that has poured out upon them. It has not been easy for these elderly people, not in the best of health, to take all this. Thank you, my dear ones, and forgive me for having brought all this worry and distress upon you.
Thank you to my wife, who has truly carried herself like a comrade-in-arms, like a real Decembrist’s wife. To all the members of my family I want to say that I love you!
I have three young children, and I want to give them a good education. I want to work, and I will work – in a new capacity now, not as an owner of an oil company – for the good of my country and of my people. No matter how the court rules.
I thank you for your attention.
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