19 August 2008

Lebedev’s lawyers were appealing against the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the Tverskoi district court’s decrees

Platon Lebedev’s defence team has submitted an extensive formal appeal against the ruling issued by Judge Alexei Sevalkin of the Tverskoi district court in Moscow who on 17 June turned down Lebedev’s claim against the Prosecutor General's office.

On examining the text justifying the ruling Lebedev’s lawyer Vladimir Krasnov discovered that the judge “had failed to analyse a substantial part of the claim” and had made contradictory statements about the remaining sections of the defence submission. The defence wants to defend its client Platon Lebedev from slander and libel by ensuring that defamatory statements that appeared on the official website of the Prosecutor General's office on 16 February 2007 are false.

One such assertion concerned the Apatit plc fertiliser manufacturing plant in the Murmansk Region. The website contained the following allegation: “It has been established that Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, Platon L. Lebedev and other persons operated as an organised group to misappropriate in 1994-1996 by means of a swindle shares in Apatit plc and the output of the said enterprise (for which they have both been sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment).”

Platon Lebedev and his defence lawyers declared that in accordance with Article 49.1 of the Russian Federation’s Constitution the guilt of an individual can only and exclusively be established by a verdict of a court that has come into force. No such verdict exists, convicting Khodorkovsky and Lebedev of having acquired either shares in Apatit or the factory’s output by means of a deception.

In his ruling Mr Sevalkin did mention that the Meshchansky district court ruling closed the case against Mr Lebedev in this disputed episode due to the statute of limitations. In summary, however, the judge nevertheless “rehabilitated” the website of the Prosecutor General's office by indicating that the information it had distributed was simultaneously in full accord with the texts of several court decisions.

“One part of Judge Sevalkin’s ruling contradicts another; it contradicts the law and it contradicts the legal position of the Constitutional Court which established beyond any doubt that a decision to close a case due to the statute of limitations is in no respects a substitute for a court verdict. By their content and legal significance such decisions do not constitute acts establishing the guilt of particular individuals,” Vladimir Krasnov asserts.

The Prosecutor General's website further accused Lebedev and Khodorkovsky of the theft of 38% of the shares in the Eastern Oil Company (VNK) plc. “Such an event never took place, nor could it have done so,” Platon Lebedev pointed out in his plea, emphasising that VNK shares belonging to the State were sold at an open auction. The Tverskoi court, however, declined to comment on the arguments of the plaintiff and the accused on this issue. “There is not a word concerning this section in ruling against which we are appealing,” reads the formal appeal.