The Convict who Frightens the Kremlin

It is in this tiny and outdated courtroom No. 7 on the second floor of the Khamovnitchesky District Court of Moscow that is partly shaped the future of the new Russia. The traditional cage bars for the defendants has been replaced by a bullet-proof glass cell. "Officially, it is a protection. In fact, the bars gave a disastrous image of the country", said Vera Tchelicheva, from the opposition newspaper "Novaya Gazeta", which has a very low circulation, the only one to continuously monitor the hearings. The general public will know nothing of the theater of the absurd that is played here, of what proves to be the test case for the Russian government.

Rising to power in 1999, the former KGB lieutenant-colonel Vladimir Putin had agreed to impose the "dictatorship of law". Recognizing, nine years later, the lack of judicial independence, his successor in the Kremlin in 2008, the jurist Dmitry Medvedev has himself promised to end "legal nihilism" and introduce the "rule of law," in other words, to transform Russia into a state where the law rules. But Vladimir Putin, now Prime minister, has remained the "national leader". While the press and foreign ministries, weighing up the power of both, would like to see in Medvedev a "new Russian Gorbachev" and are lost in conjectures and expectations about the liberalization of a regime that has particularly been hard under Putin, in the small room No. 7 of the court, the matter appears settled.

A rigged trial

In the glass cage called "the aquarium", two large fish: pale with white, short shaven hair, thin glasses, wearing a sweatshirt, a black jacket and jeans, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 46 with his associate, Platon Lebedev, 53. Without fear of ridicule, Russian "justice" seeks to drown the two men in months and months of hearings, under hundreds of witnesses, 188 volumes, nearly 10.000 pages of charges and hundreds of kilos of documents, including personal letters , photo albums, and laundry bills.

Before becoming the most famous political prisoner in Russia, Khodorkovsky was the richest man in the country. Taking advantage of the great buy-outs market in the 1990s, questionable privatizations and the legal void, he had founded, from scratch, the oil company Yukos.

Trained in Western management skills, a zealous worker, knowing first to listen and then decide, Khodorkovsky, coming from a modest family of chemists and the Young Communists, had succeeded, often swimming in troubled waters, to make it the leading company in the country, the best managed, the cleanest and the most transparent one. Today, in front of him is Valery Lakhtine, chief prosecutor. Stooped, with angular features and a haggard face, wearing a luxury watch worth several months of his salary, he regularly makes mistakes in the references and is lost under tons of papers.

The audience, about fifty people at most, laughs. Indeed, the prosecutor, assisted by four deputies, has put a laptop in front of him. But the screen is blank. In two days of hearing, he will laboriously type a sentence and a half with one finger. In front of them, stands the army of lawyers of the defendants, also equipped with laptops but showing formidable efficiency. All the documents have been scanned. As soon as they are mentioned, they appear on the screen.

It is a gigantic battle between the old and formidable Russian bureaucracy and the latest Western technology. But a rigged battle. For whatever happens in this room, Khodorkovsky will wiithout doubt be found guilty. First sentenced in 2003 to eight years in prison for tax fraud, he saw his company dismantled, officially in favor of the state and the "people" but in fact to the benefit of people close to Putin.

His parole release was denied, a (false) witness accused Khordorkovsky of returning from a walk without holding his hands behind his back. He is regularly punished and thrown into a dungeon. For keeping two "unauthorized" lemons, drinking tea "out of time limits", giving an interview in writing, missing a sewing class, etc. Khodorkovsky must be kept in prison. He is a dangerous man, "under video-surveillance twenty-four seven, even in the toilets", says his mother, Marina Filippovna, 73. He served his first sentence more than 6000 kilometers away from Moscow and his family, in Siberia. 40 Celsius degrees in the summer, - 40 Celsius degrees in the winter. Officially, because of a "lack of space, in any closer location".

Before Khodorkovsky's entry into the glass box, a dog sniffs the room. Then, under the applause of supporters' applause and their waving flowers, the two defendants arrive, handcuffed, escorted by police officers from the special forces, heavily armed, who are making efforts to appear watching but yawn at the hearing. The area is under high surveillance. The matter is serious. Khodorkosvky and his partner might spend twenty years in prison. This time, they are accused of stealing, physically, at least 250 million tons of oil.

The problem is: the volume of oil which is supposed to have been stolen exceeds the total production of Yukos. "The amount would be enough to fill a train that could go three times around the equator," said Khodorkovsky, amused, at the opening of his second trial in March. Another inconsistency: Yukos has paid 40 billion dollars in taxes on the alleged stolen oil. The company was the largest contributor to the Russian budget. Considering the accusations as "schizophrenic", the defence requested a psychiatric examination of prosecutor. The prosecutor had to admit some "inaccuracies", "technical errors". The trial continues.

That day, at the outset of the hearing, Mikhail Khodorkovsky repeats in a soft but firm voice and his constant demand: let the documents showing that his company delivered Transneft the allegedly "stolen" oil be added to the file. Besides, how could it be otherwise? Transneft has a monopoly for the pipelines and oil transportation on the Russian territory. A request once more denied by Judge Viktor Danilkine, who has consistently rejected the defence motions. Khodorkovsky will therefore not be able to prove his innocence. Without doubt one of the most brilliant, the most Westernized and least flashy member of the new Russian elite, Khodorkovsky is an audacious man. Did not he have crazy projects in Putin's Russia: bringing American companies in his capital, fostering relations with the West through his foundation "Open Russia", daring to defy the head of the Kremlin to take real steps against corruption that more than ever is a gangrene up to the summit of power? Did not he also sponsor the Democratic and liberal opposition to counterbalance the hegemonic ruling party "United Russia"? With his efficiency, organizational skills, determination, might he not become tomorrow's leader that the opposition is desperately seeking?

But in relentlessly pursuing him, the State has made him a martyr, one of those characters from Dostoevsky novels which the Russians like, although they had rather appreciated the first trial against the oligarch, this "nouveau riche"- and even worse, in a country where anti-Semitism is still alive, who had Jewish origins. And even if it is clear that Khodorkovsky is not a saint, everyone knows he is not tried for misconduct alleged against him. Otherwise, all the new Russian elite who would be in prison today.

Judicial Farce

Second day of hearing. Big surprise. Attorney Latkhine triumphantly waves a pack of new documents. The defence requests to examine them. Recess. It turns out that these new pieces of "evidence" of guilt, obtained outside any procedure, were requested the day before by the defence but refused by the court. Bursts of laughter in the room. Confusion of the prosecutor. Another interruption. A bit embarrassed, the judge accepts the documents. Then comes the time Valeri Latkhine waited for, he who probably dreams of being decorated by Putin himself, just like the prosecutor of the first trial. Andrei Kraïnov, one of innumerable prosecution witnesses, presents himself to the bar. He got only a five year suspended sentence in the first trial. He had cooperated with the prosecution. Embarrassed to be there, he lowers his head, speaks in a voice barely audible, almost invariably responds to questions during a day and a half: 'ia nia znaïou', 'ia nia pomniou, "I do not know", "I do not remember".

"Do you know who gave the order to transform the legal structure of Yukos-Moscow? - No, I do not know", replies the witness. Attorney Latkhine sits down with a knowing look. Nobody understands what he has in mind. Not even Judge Viktor Danilkine, embarrassed by this show as boring as it is deplorable, who eventually loses his temper: "But what are you talking about?" he abruptly asks the prosecutor.

"I do not know if the accusation knows itself where it is going", says Vladimir Krasnov, a defence counsel. Like a beaten dog, Attorney Lakhtine resumes the interrogation. "Now, you're giving answers to the witness!" cries the irritated the judge who has more than he can take by this trial that is turning into a judicial farce, and which seems like it came right out of a Kafka novel. In the aquarium, Khodorkovsky does not lift an eye. He methodically examines the record of the accusation. The cros-examination turns into a disaster for the prosecutor. The witness has to even admit that he lied at the first trial, and that he does not know the procedures for delivery of oil from Yukos to Transneft.

Almost systematically, the prosecutor's witnesses become those of the defence: they must agree that it is physically impossible to steal 250 million tons of oil. At the end, Khodorkovsky speaks. In a clear and firm voice, he is going to take apart, in three turns and a few minutes, two days of hearings. He addresses the judge: "First, you allowed the prosecutor to question a witness him specifying the charges. Second, you allowed the prosecutor to act outside of this trial by questioning a man that everybody understood that he knew nothing: nothing about the oil delivery sites from Yukos to Transneft, nothing about the people in charge. Thirdly, you refused to let me speak during the study of the evidence. The result of all this? An absurd scene that is wasting the court's time. If you had let me speak, if you wanted to know who gave the order to transform the status of Yukos-Moscow, I would have told you.
That's me. I would have said when, how and why. Vsyo!" "That's all!"

The audience is delighted. Judge Danilkine wipes his glasses. Attorney Lakhtin picks up piles of files. Without a shadow of visible emotion, Khodorkovsky sits down, slowly drinking a glass of water. Truly a dangerous man. -Jean-Baptiste Naudet