Highest court in Chita Region upholds appeal by Lebedev’s lawyers and sends case back for re-examination

The Chita Region Court has returned the appeal for fresh examination by the court of first instance, and a partial ruling was issued in respect of the Ingodinsky district court judge who ruled against considering the appeal. She had not given due attention to the arguments of the plaintiff’s lawyers and committed an infringement of the Criminal Procedural Code.

During Thursday’s hearing before the judicial collegium of the Chita Region Court arguments were heard from the prosecutor’s office. The investigators had grounds for instigating a criminal case, declared the prosecutor, and Platon Lebedev had been formally notified of the new case. There was no justification, therefore, for demanding that the judge be taken off the case, he said.

During the proceedings Lebedev’s defence team asserted that the decisions of the Ingodinsky district court were unfounded and the actions of the investigators, unlawful. “You cannot instigate a criminal case if no crime has been committed,” defence lawyer Alexei Miroshnichenko stated earlier: “In the decree against which we are appealing there is no indication of the grounds for instigating a new criminal case.”

Lebedev’s lawyers consider that their complaint about this incident relates not to the criminal case under which their client now stands accused and should therefore be considered under the jurisdiction of the Basmanny district court in Moscow. It was as a result of the previous criminal case, linked to the Open Russian Foundation, that Platon Lebedev was transferred from Moscow to Chita where he was later charged with new offences.

The case against Lebedev was opened on 2 December 2004 but he only received notification of the investigation two years later. The present appeal is now being heard in court for the third time. In addition his lawyers have demanded that a partial ruling be issued against the Ingodinsky district judge who, in the decree to which they object, included false information and then unlawfully restricted the deadline for submission of addenda to the lawyers’ complaint and for the appeal on behalf of their client.

On 18 June an analogous hearing was held at the Chita Region Court with regard to former head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In that case an appeal against the unlawful actions of the investigators was also returned to the Ingodinsky district court for re-examination.


(Interfax, 3.07.2008)