According to Russia analyst James Beadle:

[Russia's] economic development is the innocent victim in this domestic power play. Russia’s business leaders may understand this message but international investors don’t. They observe a distrubing dichotomy between words and actions. Putin has demonstrated that his arbitrary word is the law and that Russia’s legal system remains feudal…Russia’s popularity as a target for investment of all forms will be hindered by insecure political structures. Foreign direct investment will be the biggest victim.

Russia also faces pressure to reduce corrpution and President Medvedev has put that at the top of his agenda. Despite Medvedev’s efforts at combating corruption, Russia continues to fail to comply with the Council of Europe’s Group of Statees Against Corruption (GRECO). Out of 26 recommendations made, Russia completed only a third. Accoring to Alexei Volkov, head of the State Duma’s commission on anti-corruption legislation, change in the area of corruption requires “deep” analysis to see if “they will work in Russia taking into account our culture and tradions.” Would that be the culture of corruption Mikhail Khodorkovsky mentioned in 2010?

Tony Avelar/Bloomberg News

News that Goldman Sachs engineered a major stake in Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking website, by Moscow-based investment firm DST Global offers more evidence to support Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s observation in the Washington Post last year that corruption ranks as a leading Russian export.

“The source of the funds used to make the Facebook investment merits further investigation,” said Pavel Ivlev, chairman of the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom. “It’s increasingly clear that money stolen by corrupt Russian officials is being spirited out of the country and invested in legitimate Western businesses.”

Created in 2005, DST is owned by oligarch Alisher Usmanov and Yuri Milner, founder of Russia’s most successful Internet ventures, including Mail.ru.

Usmanov, a native of Uzbekistan, spent six years in an Uzbek prison on a conviction of fraud and embezzlement in the 1980s, charges he says were politically inspired. A Soviet court later dismissed the charges and Usmanov eventually made billions of dollars in the post-Soviet era by managing steel mill subsidiaries for Gazprom before they were spun off as his own businesses.

The record shows that Usmanov’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin leaders has made him one of Russia’s wealthiest men. From his lead role at Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant that absorbed assets stolen from Khodorkovsky’s Yukos in 2003-2004, to his current company Metalloinvest, Usmanov has made the money he used to invest in Facebook by capitalizing on what former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov calls “Putin’s capitalism for friends.”

Milner got his start in business working for Khodorkovsky’s bank Menatep, setting up a brokerage and investment arm before leaving in 1997, the Financial Times reported. Officials aligned with the regime later prosecuted former Menatap financial executives and tried to force them to testify falsely against Khodorkovsky. But not Milner, who shifted into investing in the Internet with the backing of Usmanov and others tied to Putin.

Following Khodorkovsky’s conviction last month a second round of trumped up charges, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko dismissed protests from leaders in Washington and EU capitals, saying “we expect everyone to mind their own business, both at home and in the international arena.”

Investors in Russia have done just that, “minding their own business” by pulling assets out of the country at an accelerated pace, according to Pavel K. Baev in a post-verdict analysis.

The conviction of Khodorkovsky proves that Prime Minister Putin and not President Medvedev controls Russia and “translates into a re-evaluation of business and personal prospects in a country of self-serving bureaucracy – and into capital flight that increased sharply in the last months of 2010 and is set to reach $25 billion to $30 billion,” Baev wrote.

“Medvedev tries to explain away this worrisome trend by emphasizing the need to improve the investment climate, which in his view “leaves something to be desired; it is bad.” Medvedev has also initiated a package of reforms in economic legislation that should take effect in 2011-12, and quite probably he simply does not understand that the Khodorkovsky case is not a minor setback for the markets, as it was five years ago, but the irrefutable verdict on his “modernization” strategy.” Yet the verdict renders hollow Medvedev’s statements supporting the rule of law and enforceable contracts in Russia.

“Investors in PepsiCo, Morgan Stanley, Facebook should closely question their board members about the prudence of those companies risking capital with the Putin regime given the growing list of major Western companies that have been defrauded by corrupt Russian officials,” Ivlev said. “But more telling are the latest statistics which show that Russian businesses that have benefited from the regime are now eschewing further investments in the country given the lawlessness that they themselves helped promote.”

Defense Slams “Charade of Justice”

Reuters

New York, December 27, 2010 – Today a Moscow court found Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev guilty of embezzling a staggering two thirds of the total production of the Yukos Oil Company over a six-year period. The conviction in this 22-month mock judicial process confirms the subservience of the judicial system in Russia to corrupt officials who continue to view Khodorkovsky as a threat and who seek to prevent his scheduled release in 2011. Khodorkovsky is already serving an 8-year sentence, handed down in 2005, but dating from his arrest in 2003. Had he been found not guilty he would have been released in 2011, a few months before Russia’s 2012 presidential elections. The new unlawful prison term will be announced either this week or shortly after the Khamovnichesky Court reconvenes from holidays in mid-January. Prosecutors have asked for 14-year sentences for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

According to lead defense lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant: “The trial was a charade of justice, the charges were absolutely false, but I fear the sentencing will be very real.”

The behavior of the prosecutors and of the judge turned the trial into a fiasco. Despite filling time by reading from a 188-volume case file, and parading numerous witnesses into court, prosecutors were unable (and did not even try) to prove how it was possible that Yukos covered its operating costs, invested heavily in capital expenditures and acquisitions and paid taxes and dividends when the entire oil production of Yukos over a six-year period was being stolen, as alleged in the indictment. At the end of the trial, prosecutors further confused their case when they attempted to save face by reducing the volume of oil allegedly stolen by approximately one third.

“This verdict diminishes Russia’s legitimacy in the world stage and signals to policy makers and investors that Russia’s political leaders apply the law as they see fit,” said Pavel Ivlev, former corporate counsel to Khodorkovsky.

The authorities misleadingly attempted to portray the process as legitimate. The defendants were permitted to speak in court almost without restrictions, but the judge blocked their lawyers from introducing exculpatory documentary evidence and refused to hear many witnesses and experts. Illusions of adversarial process and legitimacy were created by allowing the defense to file motions and objections to serious procedural violations, however the judge routinely quashed the vast majority of these motions and failed to react to the objections. The defense and the defendants persisted to the end in doing anything they could to document the full extent of the mistrial, and have publicly released online all submissions rejected by the court.

The verdict in this trial is based on patently false allegations that are incompatible with the first case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev and with the enormous tax claims that bankrupted Yukos to the benefit of persons controlling state-run Rosneft. The conviction is also impossible to reconcile with numerous decisions of Russian courts that have recognized the tax claims against Yukos. Today’s ruling also contradicts Russia’s official position as it attempts to defend its treatment of Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and Yukos before the European Court of Human Rights. There, the Russian authorities allege that it was lawful to impose grossly punitive taxes on proceeds from the sale of oil owned, sold and accounted for by Yukos. On the other hand, in the Khamovnichesky Court the prosecutors allege on behalf of the Russian Federation that the same oil was stolen from the company by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, and therefore could not have been sold by Yukos. The court supported the slanderous allegations of oil theft despite the fact that the so-called “injured parties”, production subsidiaries of Yukos, received not only full compensation for their production costs but also 2 billion USD profits from sales.

Politically it is notable that in the most high-profile trial in Russia, closely-watched by the public and media all over the world, the court could so openly ignore applicable procedural and substantive laws as well as basic notions of fairness. This is testament to the power of those corrupt officials who zealously seek to justify their seizure, control and ownership of Yukos assets and to isolate Khodorkovsky and Lebedev from Russia’s business and public spheres – and to keep them in jail as long as possible to achieve these goals. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s most recent (but far from the first) public intervention in the case and undisguised pressure on the court came in televised remarks on December 16, 2010, one day after a last-minute postponement of the reading of the verdict to December 27, 2010. With the judge still deliberating on the case, the Prime Minister directly mentioned the current charges and stated that Khodorkovsky’s guilt had been proven in court and that he must stay in jail.

The trial and its verdict are an open challenge – and indeed an affront – to President Dmitry Medvedev’s highly-publicized efforts to ensure the rule of law and to reform Russia’s criminal justice system and to fight government corruption. If upheld on appeal, this verdict shall be a triumph of corrupt officials controlling Russia’s law enforcement and judicial bodies, and a setback for an entire country that aspires yet continually fails to modernize.

PWC, Kommersant

Accounting Firm Drops Audits Under Pressure from Kremlin

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) today finds itself thrust into the middle of the world’s highest-profile political show trial – accused by the defendant, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former Yukos Oil CEO, of improperly withdrawing ten years of certified financial audits to keep PWC executives out of deadly Russian prisons. As the “trial” in Moscow edges towards the end of its critical defense phase, lawyers for Khodorkovsky and his co-defendant Platon Lebedev are engaged in proceedings in the U.S. to show that PWC executives caved to threats by corrupt government officials to help prosecutors bolster their fabricated case, which numerous independent courts and political observers have dismissed as a farce. The stakes are running high as a guilty verdict in the Moscow trial would land Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in prison for another 15 years and thwart much-needed investment in Russia. In the U.S., Khodorkovsky’s defense team has asked the California Board of Accountancy to revoke the licenses of Douglas Miller, the then-PWC partner who approved the audit-opinion withdrawal, and requested the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to order PWC to produce documents related to its decision.

 This situation symbolizes why the Russian business community is not free — a business leader is jailed because he is viewed as a political threat and then his company’s independent auditor, a leading international firm, is attacked and forced to choose between its professional integrity and its professional survival in Russia,” said Pavel Ivlev, Chairman, Committee for Russian Economic Freedom.

Dmitri F. Vyatkin, Russian Parliamentary member mentioned that the impasse was overcome because the ECHR had addressed Russia’s concerns by providing written commitments that Russian judges would be included in reviews of potential cases against Russia, the Court would not begin investigating complaints before cases were formally accepted and the Court would not have new powers to enforce rulings.

Taken together this sounds like Russia wants to transform the ECHR into a Russian court: by hearing complaints against Russia that the Russian government approves of, not delving too much in to the details of complaints filed and if the complaint is accepted for the Court to have no ability to enforce its ruling.

However, Thomas Hammarberg, the human rights commissioner of the Leaders of the Council of Europe, presents a different view of Russia’s approval of Protocol 14, that Russia’s concerns where heard but ultimately Russia will be held to the same rules that apply to other members and that no changes to the protocol were made.

Leaving for now, what Russia’s ratification of Protocol 14 actually means for the ECHR, a central question remains, “What propelled Russia to ratify the protocol after all these years?”

“Smoothing over differences” appears to be the official reason media outlets are reporting, however there may be other reasons political and financial reasons why Russia is offering this carrot to the West.  

Earlier this week, the $100 billion lawsuit YUKOS v. Russia was postponed for the third time because two Russian representatives were unavailable. Perhaps the Russian authorities feel that ratification of Protocal 14 could pave the way for this case to be dismissed.

Additionally, the Financial Times reported earlier this week that Russian companies would be seeking $90 billion over the next two years to finance debt restructuring and capital improvements and perhaps to rebuild the coffers for politically connected Russian business owners who saw their fortunes collapse during the 2008 financial crisis. As demonstrated with the Rusal IPO, concerns over the management of Russian companies remain and ratifying Protocol 14 may be a signal to the investment community that Russia wants to play nice.

Russia may see ratifying Protocol 14 satifying many goals: to reduce the effectiveness complaints against Russia in the ECHR while reassuring investors that Russia abides by the rule of law. But as the trial against former YUKOS chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a Russian policeman’s open letter to end authorized corruption demonstrate, Russia remains a feudal state, where

in absence of functional legal or law enforcement systems, people’s only real protection lies in a network of personal and professional relationships with powerful individuals.

On Thursday, January 14th the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is hearing the case of YUKOS Oil Company v. Russian Federation, the first time in six years of litigation that both sides will meet face-to-face in a legal battle on the Russian authorities expropriation of YUKOS and its assets beginning in 2003.  Foreign policy and Russian officials have acknowledged that the imprisonment of YUKOS’s CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was due to political reasons stemming from his support of opposition parties.

Meanwhile, the Rusal continues on its IPO path, even as more doubts about the process have surfaced. Its controlling shareholder Oleg Deripaska continues to be linked to organized crime, was refused a visa to enter the United States on those grounds and has received millions in government money funnelled through Russian state-run Vnesheconombank (VEB), controlled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

YUKOS’s Mikhail Khodorkovsky is being charged in a second round of trumped up charges while Rusal’s  Oleg Deripaska is being rewarded for his cooperation and collaboration with the Russian government, stating publicly that he would transfer Rusal back to the government at any time saying, “If the state says we need to give it up, we’ll give it up.”

The full article translated below via Google Translate:

Khodorkovsky’s long shadow
Yukos was once an example to be established early on ethics and years later Vladimir Putin again lives in fear of the dead and a group jailed billionaire
Eduard Stein
December 2009, 04:00 Clock 14h

For some reason, Vladimir Putin, sensing a need for clarification. After six years of evasive answers and arcane information about the rise and fall of the government-imposed oil company Yukos was Russia’s most powerful man on television two weeks ago suddenly on the offensive. For years, curious person urged the former President and current Prime Minister, a plausible explanation. Vain. Finally, it was a dish that had sent the once-largest oil company in the country several years ago in the bankruptcy, said Putin and his top officials free of the responsibility: Finally, the court on a repeated sentence or the release would be the Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest decide.

But it was still Putin himself, who forestalled suddenly in the course of his TV Question Time the court and in unexpected detail, commented on the case. What should spontaneously appear, therefore, ultimately came more through-composed. Do not go there about when to release for whom, “said the Prime Minister go there so that repetition of such economic crimes. They also maintained that the money from the auction of Yukos assets RULE in social housing has been set, “Putin said to the astonished spectators”. Then, to dare the legal tightrope: the ex-security chief of Yukos, Alexei Pitschugin, who has been convicted of three contract killings in 2007 to life imprisonment without the guilt, “has clearly acted in the interest of and on behalf of the owner.

Since Putin knows his opponent over the court, “said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who himself was never accused of murder, from prison. You may still call upon the Premier to give evidence.

In seven days on the beginning of the Causa Yukos, the topic is thus again a household word. For years, the Russian authorities had hoped that the interest in his most prominent prisoner, who was once estimated at 15 billion U.S. dollars assets, more and more abated. And in the end perhaps totally dies. Too much the case had tarnished the image of the rulers and the country already. No other matter beyond the Chechen war had made the perceptive world opinion against Russia’s development under Putin. No subject had clearly signaled observers abroad that began with Putin after a decade of attempts in a market economy and democracy in a new era of statism and the authoritarian power vertical in Russia.

None other than 25 October 2003 was so obvious. Early in the morning landed on that day a Russian Tupoljew with Khodorkovsky aboard in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. A few minutes later, the domestic intelligence service FSB special forces stormed the plane. “When I saw the siege was everything to me clearly,” to the then forty-year multi-billionaire said.

Already months before a string of incidents had indicated that was the most modern and most efficient oil company in the country with his boss and major shareholder in the crosshairs of investigators. What followed after the arrest, was an unprecedented geheimdienstgeschulten tug of war between the Kremlin and the relentless head of a mega company with 105,00 employees. At the end Khodorkovsky was convicted of fraud and tax evasion in 2005 with eight years imprisonment in the remotest Siberia. Subsequently, Yukos was filleted and mostly incorporated into the state oil company Rosneft, which rose to the market leader.

Since the spring of this year, Khodorkovsky is in Moscow again in court. Shake about the new indictment not only Putin’s critics around: the tycoon is the whole Yukos flow have been stolen. Previously he had been convicted solely because of tax evasion for the Yukos oil. Now the prosecutor has accused him of having illegally sold oil worth 20 billion euros. In extreme cases, this latest charge threaten to bring more than 20 years in prison.

One should remember the Mafia boss Al Capone, the “30 year old was formally sentenced in the U.S. for tax fraud – but in reality for all crimes he committed,” Putin initiated at the end of November in France. His answers to answer the questions about Khodorkovsky was drastic. He likened his rival on this occasion with the U.S. billion fraudster Bernard Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Nobody has felt the injustice and “even a beep given by itself,” complained Vladimir Putin. Why just the other Causa Khodorkovsky with a measure would be measured?

Because it was politically motivated to be Khodorkovsky’s lawyers never tires of stressing. That’s what Putin himself admitted behind closed doors, said a few months ago, none other than Mikhail Kasyanov, the beginning of the affair, Prime Minister under Putin. The former president had echauffiert about the fact that Khodorkovsky without permission of the Kremlin’s next Liberal parties also began to sponsor the Communists,’ said Kasyanov. Immediately after his assumption of office, Putin had called all the oligarchs to abide by political non-interference. All other tycoons, who like Khodorkovsky, seized during the privatizations of the 90s to questionable nature and at bargain prices, huge fortunes under the nail, and great power within the state itself, had understood Putin’s message – and Khodorkovsky was warned. The wealth had gone to his head and caused a feeling of integrity, he would tell later companions. “Was Chodor,” as his intimates call him, just a strong person with principles to keep his followers against it.

Khodorkovsky has indeed has strong international support. Unlike court proceedings, the lobbying machine of the volatile Yukos billionaire runs very fast. Together with lawyers, they instigated in an information war with the Kremlin, which they have won very early on. In early December, they also achieved a real part of success: An international arbitration tribunal in The Hague ordered former Yukos shareholders to legal action against the Russian government because it had allowed, despite binding to the International Energy Charter, the expropriation of the Group. As the claim will be circulated to the shareholders of 100 billion U.S. dollars.

“In the end, the European Court, but not 10,000 dollars compensation claim,” warns Alexei Makarkin of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies to realism in a new information war. But also includes Makarkin – such as Khodorkovsky’s supporters – not that Putin’s attacks against the detainee associated with the decision of the Court of Holland and the prime minister had once built a defensive line.

For just as likely, but observers think that is on the rise in the Russian government panic because the politicians are afraid because of the absurdity of the charge in the current second trial in Moscow for an acquittal.

Domestically, such a defeat would have to get over, however. The nation does not feel any great sympathy for Khodorkovsky. But at least one third of the population expressed according to the survey by the Institute Levada-Center at the beginning of the conviction, that people think Khodorkovsky could help with their know-how of the country in crisis. “If Khodorkovsky was set free, he would become perhaps less economically, but socially active,” says Sergei Guriev, rector of New Economic School in Moscow: “As a moral authority he could collect a lot of people around.”

An acquittal would have still another effect: When would this year have a pregnant Yukos lawyer suffering from AIDS and the former deputy leader of the group have been released from prison, the verdict further evidence of potential investors that the new president, Dmitry Medvedev, with the modernization seriously. “It would be a sign that the country does not drift to a halt,” says Guriev.

But that when it comes to power, the investment climate for the governance of secondary, Makarkin said: “Being a strong character Khodorkovsky is ready to fight. Putin has made clear with his recent statements that he did not want to see him in freedom.”

Nadezhda Sheck, a former employee of the International Financial Alliance MENATEP said during her cross-examination in court that investigators: summoned her into the Prosecutors Offices on Wednesday 18th November, just two days before her testimony in court on Friday and was interrogated regarding a new investigation against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Ms Sheck signed a non-disclosure agreement and was prevented from sharing any additional information in court on the subject of her questioning last week.

This new information shared by the witness in open court on Monday is a clear example of how the prosecution continue to use illegal tactics and place undue pressure on witnesses before giving their testimony in court. Under Russian law, use of secret parallel investigations against defendants to obtain information or meet with witnesses in the ongoing trial is prohibited practice.

In response to the witness’ revelation, Judge Viktor Danilkin openly aided and abetted the prosecution, threatening Ms Shek with criminal liability if she discussed further details of her recent interrogation.

Commenting on the new evidence of corrupt practices by the prosecution and Judge Danilkin’s reaction, Vadim Klyuvgant, Khodorkovsky’s Lead Defence Lawyer, said:

“The whole time this second case has been going on, we have been relentlessly insisting that there is a parallel investigation taking place. What the witness Shek said – this is just one of a multitude of illustrations, evidence that there is a parallel inquiry going on – constantly, ceaselessly, secretly, and illegally.”

“…the behaviour of the presiding judge…shows a major shift in his position. If before he merely sat by silently and did not try to stop all this illegal activity by the party of the prosecution as a whole – both that of the prosecutors in the courtroom and that of the investigative bodies behind their backs, about which we are learning – today he openly aided and abetted them. He helped conceal the traces of this activity, even to the point of intimidating the witness, even to the point of obvious discrimination against the defence in relation to the prosecution during the questioning of the witness, when the prosecution has the opportunity to ask everything it wants, irrespective of whether this does or does not bear a relation to the case.”

“…the court has no right to intimidate a witness. A witness in court is obligated by law to answer all questions irrespective of any other circumstances whatsoever. Intimidating a witness with some kind of consequences of some kind of written undertaking, made with respect to some obscure case — this is simply a complete and total outrage.”

MBK and his colleague, Platon Lebedev (“PLL”) were jailed, charged and convicted, in a show trial of theft, fraud and corporate and personal tax evasion. They were sentenced to eight years in a Siberian penal colony. The European Court of Human Rights has found that PLL’s rights were violated during the pre-trial phase of the proceedings. Appeals to the ECHR by MBK and PLL are pending. MBK and PLL became eligible for parole in 2007, which was denied.

Just before they became eligible for parole, the Russian government again charged both men, this time with embezzlement and money laundering. Specifically, the regime alleged that MBK and PLL embezzled all of Yukos’s oil production (350 million metric tons) and shares held by a Yukos subsidiary in six operating companies, and laundered the sales proceeds of the oil and the shares themselves. The trial on these charges began in March 2009 and is ongoing.

The current allegations against MBK and PLL go beyond meritless; they are absurd. The oil embezzlement charge requires that MBK and PLL physically stole the oil. However, the prosecution offers no evidence that any oil was ever missing or of where the defendants may have stored 20% of Russia’s annual production. In fact, the allegedly embezzled oil is more than Yukos produced in six years.

Contrary to what is alleged, Yukos booked all oil sales revenues on its independently audited financial statements. Yukos could never have paid operating expenses, taxes (Yukos was Russia’s largest taxpayer), capital expenditures, dividends, or acquired companies for cash, if they had embezzled the oil. The allegedly embezzled shares were actually moved for a legitimate business purpose, asset protection, as part of transactions that benefitted all of the company’s investors. What’s more, the allegedly embezzled shares remained on Yukos’s books as reflected in its independently audited financial statements. In essence, MBK and PLL, as part of the majority shareholder in Yukos, are accused of stealing from themselves! The new charges cannot be squared with the prior tax evasion conviction. The new charges are irreconcilable with MBK and PLL ‘s conviction in the first case. MBK and PLL could not have caused Yukos to evade corporate taxes on the sale of oil, i.e., the first case, if, as they are now being charged, they embezzled the same oil and laundered the proceeds for their personal gain.

The impetus for what is now known as the “Khodorkovsky Affair” was the fear among Russian President Putin and his supporters that MBK and Yukos’s success posed a political and personal financial threat. World leaders are united in condemning the attack on MBK, PLL, and Yukos as politically motivated. For example President Obama, VP Biden (then Senators) and Senator McCain co-sponsored a Senate Resolution 322 (in 2005) condemning the prosecution of MBK and PLL. German President Merkel publicly condemned Russia’s political prosecution of MBK and PLL. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has adopted reports and passed resolutions finding the attack violated human rights and was politically motivated. Recently, the Italian Parliament called for government officials in Italy and throughout Europe to use diplomatic channels to compel Russia to give MBK and PLL a fair trial.

Perhaps most telling, in July 2009, ex-Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, in a sworn affidavit to the European Court of Human Rights based on his first-hand knowledge, confirmed that the Yukos-related cases were politically motivated. Kasyanov was stating fact, not opinion, based on his direct conversations, as Prime Minister, with then-President Putin. The reliability of Kasyanov’s remarkably courageous testimony must be read in the light of Russia’s history of retaliation against political opposition.

Independent Courts in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Cypress, Israel, and the Czech Republic have ruled that the attacks on MBK, PLL, and Yukos are politically motivated and have refused extradition requests, denied Russian mutual legal assistance requests related to the attack, and refused to recognize related Russian Court Orders, respectively. Several courts expressly found that no one affiliated with MBK or Yukos could receive a fair trial in Russia.