The Prosecutor-General’s office is trying to get Karinna Moskalenko disbarred.

On Wednesday, Moscow’s City Bar Chamber started a disciplinary hearing into a lawyer for former head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky - Karinna Moskalenko. As Moskalenko told Ekho Moskvy on air, the Prosecutor-General’s office has sent a motion seeking to have her disbarred to the Russian Registration Service, which has passed it on to the City Bar Chamber. The lawyer is planning to arrive in Moscow on Friday to familiarize herself with what the Prosecutor-General’s office and the Russian Registration Service have said. Moskalenko is currently in Strasbourg representing Russians who have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. According to procedure, a lawyer who has had disciplinary proceeding initiated against him or her, has first to provide a written explanation and then face an oral examination. Only after these steps have been taken can the City Bar Chamber make a decision to disbar. At this stage Moskalenko has no idea what exactly she’s accused of. ‘All I’ve managed to understand so far from what they’ve told me in Moscow’, she told Ekho Moskvy, ‘is that it’s something to do with the Khodorkovsky case’.

(Lenta.ru, 19.04.2007)

‘The motion has been put forward by the Russian Registration Service on the basis of a complaint from the Prosecutor-General’s office’, the president of Moscow’s City Bar Chamber, Genri Reznik, told Interfax. ‘As of now I am initiating supervisory proceedings in accordance with existing procedures’. He confirmed that the Russian Registration Service’s move was linked to the Khodorkovsky case. ‘It has to do with Khodorkovsky case. But I can’t go into any further details, since the hearing is in camera and may also involve lawyer-client privilege’, he said.

(Interfax, 19.04.2007)

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At the present moment Karinna Moskalenko is in Strasbourg. She will come back to Russia tomorrow. Press Centre will keep the readers updated.