FSB did not inform Pichugin which case he was questioned under - lawyer
MOSCOW. July 13 (Interfax) - Former security employee of the Yukos petroleum company, Alexei Pichugin, was never given notice in regard to which case he was questioned under on Wednesday at the investigative department of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Pichugin's lawyer Ksenia Kostromina told Interfax.
"I have taken a receipt of non-disclosure of the investigation's secrecy, but I can tell that we were not given notice in regard to which case my client has been questioned under," she said.
"I can only add that the position of Alexei Vladimirovich [Pichugin] has not changed. He considers himself illegally convicted and says he is not involved in any crimes," she said.
The lawyer refrained from any other additional comments.
Earlier, a source familiar with the situation told Interfax that Pichugin, who has been sentenced to life in prison, was transferred to the Lefortovo detention facility for procedural formalization of his testimony in a new criminal case opened against Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"Pichugin is a witness in this probe into the organized assassination of Nefteyugansk Mayor Vladimir Petukhov back in 1998. He must be interrogated in terms of procedural formalization of his testimony," the source said.
Former Yukos CEO Khodorkovsky said he believes investigators will likely force Pichugin to give testimony against him.
Pichugin was sentenced to life in prison for organizing, in 1998, the murder of Nefteyugansk Mayor Vladimir Petukhov, Valentina Korneva, director of the Moscow company Fenix (in 1998), Tambov businessman Sergei Gorin and his wife (in 2002), and also the attempted murder of Olga Kostina, former public relations adviser to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and businessman Sergei Rybin.
Pichugin denies any wrongdoing.
Investigators believe Khodorkovsky instigated Petukhov's murder; he was charged under the article 'Organizing the murder and attempted murder of two or more people' and arrested in absentia. According to investigators, while heading the Yukos petroleum company he ordered his subordinates Leonid Nevzlin and Pichugin as well as other people to kill the mayor.