Platon Lebedev is demanding such an acknowledgement from the Ingodinsky court

The Ingodinsky district court in Chita has recessed to study the written documents in the case file. It is examining the complaint by Lebedev’s lawyers about the falsification of the criminal case concerning incidents linked to the Open Russia Foundation.

The court will renew its work on Wednesday at 10 am (local time; 4 pm in Moscow), reported an Interfax-Siberia correspondent from the courtroom. During Tuesday afternoon the court heard the prosecutor and the defence attorney who, in particular, drew attention to the unlawful way in which the criminal case had been instigated. The defence demanded that Platon Lebedev be rehabilitated and the investigator, rebuked.

The prosecution spokesman declared that Lebedev had not been charged over the incident involving Open Russia. “There were insufficient grounds for doing so. It was a question of the embezzlement of funds in Russia and their laundering abroad,” he said. He also saw no reason for paying material damages as Lebedev required at the day’s hearing.

On Tuesday the defence informed the court that for more than two years Platon Lebedev had not been given access to the case documentation, nor had he “been presented with a copy of the decree instigating the criminal case,” said his attorney Alexei Miroshnichenko. The defence team consider that the investigators deliberately concealed their work so as to hamper access to a fair trial and they demanded that the decree instigating the criminal case be considered unlawful and a personal reprimand issued to the investigator responsible.

Lebedev also requested that his right to compensation for damages to the amount of 1 million roubles be recognised. His attorneys said that the prosecutor’s office had only twice submitted requests for extension of their client’s detention in custody between 2004 and 2006. “Courts on Cyprus and in Switzerland warned the Prosecutor General's office that it was a serious offence to deceive the court. Following which the prosecutor’s office recalled its official requests to those countries,” said Platon Lebedev, during the course of the hearing.

During the recess Miroshnichenko explained that these official enquiries “were linked to the transfer of funds and were indicated by the prosecutor’s office in the decree instigating a criminal case concerning an incident involving Open Russia. The allegations were not confirmed.”

It is the fourth time the Ingodinsky district court is considering this complaint. At its session on 3 July the judicial collegium of the Chita Region Court concluded that the court of first instance (i.e. Ingodinsky district court) had failed to pay sufficient attention to the arguments of the defence and overlooked an infringement of the Criminal Procedural Code. A special ruling was issued to the judge of the Ingodinsky court and the judicial collegium returned the lawyers’ complaint for examination by a different panel of judges.

(Interfax, 22.07.2008)