Fine slapped on Khodorkovsky, Lebedev a fraction of cost shares seized from them - defense
MOSCOW. July 29 (Interfax) - The defense of former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his ex-business partner Platon Lebedev has claimed that the fine imposed on the two convicts as compensation for alleged damages to the state makes up a fraction of the cost of company shares that were confiscated from them.
"According to the documents I had from the Meshchansky District Court [in Moscow], it is absolutely clear that in October 2003 Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had shares in the Yukos company seized from them that, in terms of stock exchange prices of that period, cost 404 billion rubles," Konstantin Rivkin, one of Lebedev's lawyers, told Interfax.
Under a 2007 court order, the shares were to be used as compensation for alleged damages inflicted by the two businessmen on the state, Rivkin said.
"I qualify the conduct of the court bailiff service as outrageous. My counterparts in Khodorkovsky's team and I have repeatedly sent them inquiries, asking them to answer what sum was collected in the course of the enforcement proceedings. Though the law clearly mandates that we should be given a response within a month of an inquiry, this has never been done. They couldn't give a damn about the law and are not responding to us," the lawyer said.
"If they can't sort things out between themselves - the courts, the bailiffs, the prisons - why lumber the convicts and their defense with all of this load? The prison authorities have no information about the 132 million rubles - the documents they have submitted to the court have zero in the damage compensation column. Why did those gentlemen, the court bailiffs who have woken up, conceal that 132 million for such a long time if that 132 million did exist at all. It's just a disgrace for them to be talking about voluntary compensation," Rivkin said.
It was reported earlier that court bailiffs had recovered from Khodorkovsky and Lebedev over 132 million rubles out of 17 billion under the first court sentence.
"A sum of 132.747 million rubles has been recovered and transferred to the budget collected through the sale of property - a section of land, vehicles, shares, etc. - and also seized from the bank accounts of the debtors," the Federal Court Bailiff Service told Interfax on Friday.
A spokesman for the service said that in the framework of enforcement proceedings launched in 2005, court bailiffs are to recover 17,395.449 million rubles for the benefit of the state from Khodorkovsky and Lebedev under a judgment of the Meshchansky Court, along with unpaid income taxes together with penalties in the amount of 124 million rubles from Khodorkovsky and almost 13 million rubles from Lebedev.
"Even though resolutions, demands and letters of the court bailiff were sent to the debtors and their lawful representatives, containing among other information the beginning of enforcement proceedings and the sum of the debt, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev did not take action to voluntarily pay their debts," the service said.
