Timeline of Events

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July 2003

July 2: Arrest of Platon Lebedev, leading Yukos shareholder and chairman of Group Menatep, on charges that he defrauded the state in the privatization of Apatit.

July 3: Mr. Lebedev is brought to the Basmanny district court to hear the indictment against him. His lawyers are not permitted to see or talk to him and are denied access to the courtroom.

Platon Lebedev is placed in detention in Lefortovo prison.

July 11: The offices and archives of Yukos are searched by the FSB under instructions from the Prosecutor General's office. President Putin comments, "I am, of course, opposed to arm-twisting and believe that this is no way to resolve the issue of economic crimes”. (Forbes, July 11.)

July 18: The Prosecutor General's office announces the start of five investigations into murders or attempted murders allegedly committed by Yukos associates.

July 23: The Moscow City Court refuses to release Mr. Lebedev from custody.

July 24: Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov states that the Yukos affair is having "an adverse effect on the country's image and a negative impact on the mood of investors”. (Agence France-Presse, July 24)

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August 2003

August 2: The Prosecutor General's office announces that the number of Yukos employees under investigation has increased to eight.

August 6: The Prosecutor General's office and the FSB raid the offices of Yukos-Moscow and Sibintek, Yukos' IT contractor. Lawyers for Yukos are not allowed to be present during the search. The warrant allowing the search was for documents relating to Apatit Trade, a former occupant of the offices. No Apatit Trade documents are confiscated; only documents related to Yukos-Moscow are taken.

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September 2003

September 2: The Basmanny district court in Moscow rules that Mr. Lebedev is to remain in custody until October 30. Prosecutors announce that they have material justifying Mr. Lebedev's continued detention, but put forward no new information.

September 20: Putin states that the privatization of companies will not be revisited.

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October 2003

October 3: The Prosecutor General's office raids a business club and children's home run by Yukos, removing computer servers believed to hold the company’s financial data.

October 9: The Prosecutor General's office carries out raids on Yukos security offices and the offices of Anton Drel, lawyer for Platon Lebedev. Drel calls the raids "a precedent-setting event, because nobody in the history of Russia or the Soviet Union has ever searched the office of a lawyer working on a felony case”. (The Moscow Times, October 10.)

October 17: The Prosecutor General's office files tax evasion charges against Vasily Shakhnovsky, a Yukos shareholder and elected member of the upper house of parliament, the Federation Council (or Senate), and detain him for questioning. He is released after a few hours.

October 21: The Prosecutor General's office carries out raids on the Yukos-affiliated Bank Menatep-St. Petersburg under suspicion of tax evasion.

Platon Lebedev is transferred from Lefortovo prison to remand centre (SIZO) #1 in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison.

October 23: The Prosecutor General's office raids a public relations agency hired by the liberal Yabloko party, detaining two of the party's deputies and confiscating five computer servers. Mr. Khodorkovsky has, in the past, contributed funds to the Yabloko party.

October 25: Mr. Khodorkovsky is arrested at gunpoint at a Siberian airfield and taken to Moscow, where he is charged with fraud and tax evasion. He is jailed.

October 27: President Putin refuses to meet with Russian business leaders about Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is transferred from remand centre #1 to remand centre #4 in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison.

October 29: The Prosecutor General's office demands that the election of Mr. Shakhnovsky be annulled, removing his right to parliamentary immunity.

The Natural Resources Ministry begins investigating the validity of Yukos' oil licenses.

October 30: The Prosecutor General's office freezes 44 % of Yukos shares.

Alexander Voloshin, President Putin's Chief of Staff, resigns to protest the campaign against Mr. Khodorkovsky.

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November 2003

November 2: Mr. Voloshin is replaced by Dmitry Medvedev, who expresses doubts about the legality of the October 30 seizure of Yukos shares.

November 3: Mr. Khodorkovsky resigns as chief executive of Yukos, saying, "Wherever I may work, I will do all I can for my country, Russia, in the great future of which I firmly believe”.

November 4: President Putin reaffirms that privatization of companies will not be revisited.

Yukos names Simon Kukes, a U.S. national born and raised in Russia, as its new CEO.

November 7: A Siberian court declares the election of Mr. Shakhnovsky to the Russian Parliament invalid, stripping him of immunity from prosecution. The court claims that the Evenkiya local assembly, where Mr. Shakhnovsky was elected, failed to respect electoral rules.

The Agriculture Ministry in the Siberian Region of Yakutia raises allegations that Yukos allowed the unsupervised mating of rabbits and mistreatment of pigs on a farm belonging to Sakhaneftegaz, a Yukos-affiliated company.

November 11: Mr. Khodorkovsky's request for bail is denied by the Moscow City Court and he is ordered to remain in jail until December 30. The court states that Mr. Khodorkovsky is a "public danger". (Washington Post, November 11.)

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December 2003

December 2: In a court proceeding to appeal the extension of his imprisonment, Mr. Lebedev states that he has been framed and describes numerous violations of Russian law. He also asks that criminal charges be brought against three members of the Prosecutor General's office.

December 3: Robert Amsterdam, an attorney for Mr. Khodorkovsky, says he will fight new charges that Yukos failed to pay US $5 billion in taxes. He also accuses the government of interfering in the merger of Yukos and Sibneft.

A Moscow court affirms a lower court's dismissal of the appeal of Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin, who has been in jail since June, when he was charged with murder. In his appeal, Mr. Pichugin cited procedural errors and violations, including the use of psychotropic drugs and questioning without his lawyers present. The next step in the appeals process is the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

December 8: United Russia wins over 30 % of the vote in the 2003 elections, securing its position as leader in the Duma. Neither Yabloko nor Union of Right Forces (SPS) achieved the 5 % of the vote required to win a seat in the Duma. The Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), which monitored the elections, called them "overwhelmingly distorted”.

December 9: The US Senate unanimously passes Senate Resolution 258, asking the legal and judicial authorities of the Russian Federation that Mr. Khodorkovsky be accorded the full measure of his rights, as identified in the Russian Constitution, to defend himself against all charges.

December 17: Yukos announces its plan to reverse its merger with rival oil company, Sibneft.

December 19: The Court announces it will consider on December 22, 2003 the Prosecutor General's request to extend the custody of Mr. Khodorkovsky.

December 22: After a threatened change of venue that would keep the hearing closed, it takes place as scheduled at Moscow's Basmanny district court. Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian human rights lawyer, is permitted to attend as an observer. The hearing is adjourned until December 22, when a decision is expected. More on the events of December 22.

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February 2004

February 5: Vasily Shakhnovsky is found guilty of tax evasion by the Meshchansky district court in Moscow. The court sentences him to one year in prison but announces that Mr. Shakhnovsky will be "set free because he no longer poses any risk to society". On an additional charge of document forgery, the Court finds Mr. Shakhnovsky not guilty.

February 9: Despite evidence of his deteriorating health, a Moscow court orders that Platon Lebedev remain in pre-trial detention at least until March 30.

February 11: The Prosecutor General’s office requests that the Basmanny district court extend the pre-trial detention of Alexei Pichugin. The court will consider the request on February 12. Mr. Pichugin's current term of detention expires on February 19.

February 13: The Basmanny district court remands Alexei Pichugin in custody until April 19. Mr. Pichugin asserts his innocence, telling the court his prosecution is part of a larger campaign against Yukos.

The Moscow City Court upholds a warrant for the arrest of Leonid Nevzlin, former Menatep Bank chief.

February 17: The Prosecutor General's office issues new charges against Platon Lebedev. The "extended" charges cite misappropriation of profits in the amount of US $30 million. Additional new charges include fraud, property damage, failure to obey a court's ruling, and tax evasion.

February 24: Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky submit a request to the presidium of the Moscow City Court to reverse earlier court rulings ordering his continued detention, and to release him from custody.

February 25: President Putin dismisses Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and all respective cabinet officials.

February 26: The European Parliament adopts a report on the future of EU-Russia relations that is critical of Russia's actions against Yukos. The report states that such actions have led to a "strong suspicion of political interference in the legal procedure".

Texts adopted February 26, 2004 on EU-Russia Relations (go to page 103 of this PDF file).

February 27: Russian prosecutors announce charges against Vladimir Malin, Chairman of the Russian Federal Property Fund, in connection with the Apatit criminal case against Group Menatep shareholder Platon Lebedev.

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March 2004

March 3: Platon Lebedev's lawsuit against the Russian Federation has been registered with the European Court of Human Rights. The Court recently asked the Russian government to provide detailed information about the condition of Mr. Lebedev’s health in prison.

March 4: The Prosecutor General's office announces Platon Lebedev has received a medical examination in prison.

March 5: The Basmanny district court rules that Platon Lebedev must finish studying his case file by March 25, 2004.

March 11: Lawyers representing Platon Lebedev appeal the Basmanny district court's ruling on the time limit established for Lebedev to review evidence against him. Lebedev's lawyers cited a number of violations committed by the court in reviewing the Prosecutor General's request to establish a time limit.

The Basmanny district court issues an arrest warrant for Mikhail Brudno in response to a request submitted by the Prosecutor General’s office.

March 12: The Basmanny district court rules to detain Menatep shareholder Mikhail Brudno in absentia.

Lawyers for Platon Lebedev appeal the decision of the Basmanny district court limiting the time he is given to review the materials of the case brought against him.

March 14: Incumbent Vladimir Putin wins the presidential elections, receiving more than 70 % of the overall vote.

March 16: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe issues a report concluding that the Russian presidential election lacked elements of a genuine democratic contest.

March 18: Lawyers for Platon Lebedev appeal the Basmanny district court ruling to set March 15 as the last day for him to review his case materials.

Platon Lebedev petitions Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to bring charges against Yury Biryukov, Ustinov’s first deputy, for falsifying information in Lebedev's criminal case.

March 19: Moscow's Basmanny district court rules to extend Mikhail Khodorkovsky's pre-trial detention term until May 25. The court cites the risk of flight and the possibility of Khodorkovsky influencing the investigation as reasons for keeping him in jail.

March 22: Yevgeny Baru, lawyer for Platon Lebedev, files a complaint with the Moscow Bar Association regarding client-related documents seized from him as he left the Matrosskaya Tishina prison.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger is appointed Rapporteur by the Council of Europe for the case involving Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's lawyers appeal the Basmanny district court decision to request the freezing of Swiss bank accounts believed to be connected to Mr. Khodorkovsky.

The Basmanny district court rules to keep Mikhail Khodorkovsky in jail until May 25.

March 23: The European Court of Human Rights agrees to consider complaints filed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, and Alexei Pichugin.

March 24: The Moscow City Court upholds the decision of the Basmanny district court to limit the time given to Platon Lebedev to review case materials.

March 25: Prosecutors must either complete the criminal investigation of Mikhail Khodorkovsky or ask a Moscow court to extend the pre-trial detention period.

March 26: Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky appeal to the Moscow City Court regarding the Basmanny district court's decision to extend his detention until May 25.

The Moscow Bar Association advises lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky to appeal to the Russian Constitutional Court regarding the unlawful seizure of defence files from lawyers Yevgeny Baru, Yury Schmidt, and Olga Artyukhova.

March 30: Prosecutors must either complete the criminal investigation of Menatep chairman Platon Lebedev or ask a Moscow court to extend the pre-trial detention period.

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April 2004

April 1: In accordance with a request from the Prosecutor General’s office, the Swiss public prosecutor freezes the accounts of six Yukos trading companies at the Zurich branch of French bank BNP Paribas.

The US House of Representatives’ Committee on International Relations approves a resolution calling for Russia's G8 membership to be conditional upon its adherence to democratic norms.

April 2: A Moscow court upholds an earlier decision to freeze Yukos and Sibneft shares used in the merger of the two companies. In a separate decision, the court approves a request from prosecutors to freeze foreign bank accounts allegedly belonging to Anton Drel and Vasily Alexanyan, lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The Prosecutor General’s office releases the full 55-page text of charges that have been filed against Platon Lebedev.

April 8: Lawyers for Platon Lebedev announce that his case will go to trial on April 15.

April 13: Basmanny district court extends the prison detention of Alexei Pichugin until June 19, 2004.

April 15: A Moscow court has postponed its decision concerning the appeal against the issue of an arrest warrant for Mikhail Brudno until April 20, 2004.

The European Court of Human Rights agrees to urgently review Platon Lebedev's case.

Platon Lebedev's case begins in the Meshchansky district court in Moscow with a closed preliminary hearing. The request for Mr. Lebedev's release on bail is denied.

April 16: Platon Lebedev excuses his lawyer Yevgeny Baru from his ongoing trial in Russia. Mr. Baru will represent Mr. Lebedev in his case before the European Court of Human Rights.

The Meshchansky court rules that Alexei Peshkun, co-defendant with Alexei Pichugin, should remain in custody until June 19, 2004.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's case will be referred to court in early June. Defence attorney Genrikh Padva announces that the defence team and Mr. Khodorkovsky will complete their review of case materials no later than May 25, 2004.

The Meshchansky district court postpones the continuation of Platon Lebedev's trial until April 20 in response to a request by defence lawyers to meet with Mr. Lebedev in person.

April 19: A Moscow Arbitration Court ruling implements a ban on the sale and transfer of Yukos assets in response to a request from the Russian Tax Ministry.

April 20: The rating agencies Standard & Poor's and Moody's reduce Yukos' rating in response to the Russian court's freeze of its assets.

The Moscow City Court declares valid the warrant authorizing the arrest of Mikhail Brudno.

April 22: Officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs search the main office of Yukos and plan to search Menatep offices.

The Basmanny district court rules to limit the deadline for Mikhail Khodorkovsky's review of his case materials to May 15.

April 27: A consortium of international banks led by Société Générale and Citigroup warns Yukos of the threat of defaulting on a US $1 billion loan. The warning comes shortly after the Russian government announced that Yukos owes US $ 3.5 billion in back taxes.

The Standard & Poor's rating agency places Yukos on its "negative watch" list, citing concern over the new US $3.5 billion tax bill.

April 28: The Meshchansky district court rejects an appeal to release Platon Lebedev on bail. This is the third bail appeal by Mr. Lebedev's lawyers to be rejected.

The Moscow City Court will consider Mikhail Khodorkovsky's bail appeal for release on May 12.

Yukos appoints former head of the Russian Central Bank and Duma deputy Victor Gerashchenko to the office of chairman.

April 29: The Meshchansky district court rules against combining the court cases of Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The Meshchansky district court denies Platon Lebedev bail, suggesting he could be a threat to society if freed.

Russian human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has written to the Prosecutor General and Minister of Justice expressing concern over living conditions in Russian prisons.

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May 2004

May 7: Investigators from the General Prosecutor's office search YUKOS' head office, confiscating several bags of papers.

May 12: The Moscow City Court again denies Mikhail Khodorkovsky bail and extends his pretrial detention to May 25.

The same court postpones considering an appeal from Khodorkovsky's lawyers to block the freeze on assets involved in the YUKOS case. The hearing is now scheduled for May 27.

May 18: Mikhail Khodorkovsky's case has been transferred to the Moscow Meshchansky Court. The preliminary hearing date is to be announced in a few days.

May 24: Moscow's Presnensky Court holds preliminary hearings on the disbarment of Olga Artyukhova, one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's attorneys.

The Moscow City Court will decide on May 27 whether to release Platon Lebedev. The court also will consider an appeal against of the freeze of YUKOS assets in Switzerland.

Basmanny Court rules that Alexei Pichugin must finish reviewing his case materials by June 4, 2004.

May 25: The Moscow City Court upholds the Basmanny Court ruling that limits to May 15 the time given to MBK to review his case materials.

Defense attorneys issue a statement regarding the denial of Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger's request to visit with MBK in jail.

May 26: The Moscow Arbitration Court rules against YUKOS, forcing it pay $3.5 billion in back taxes.

May 31: The hearing on Platon Lebedev’s case is postponed until June 8.

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June 2004

June 3: Lawyers for Platon Lebedev appeal with the April 6 Meshchansky Court that kept Platon Lebedev in detention

June 4: Platon Lebedev asks the Procuracy to include in the case file all petitions and appeals he and his lawyers have submitted. The Procuracy refuses. The indictment states that “the defendant Lebedev neither testified nor provided any evidence to defend himself.” The indictment includes no depositions, statements, or evidence offered by Platon Lebedev.

June 8: Judge Irina Kolesnikova begins considering Platon Lebedev’s case. The court agrees to combine theLebedev and Khodorkovsky cases. All appeals will be considered jointly. Platon Lebedev refuses to study the Khodorkovsky case file and asks for a copy of Khodorkovsky’s indictment.

June 9: The Moscow City Court upholds the decision of the Meshchansky Court to keep Platon Lebedev in detention.

Russia’s Interior Ministry investigates new charges of illegal transfers of funds from a YUKOS subsidiary. The charges are forwarded to the General Prosecutor’s office.

The Basmanny Court has postponed hearing a complaint of former YUKOS security chief Alexei Pichugin. Pichugin accused the Prosecutor General's office of failing to consider his claim that investigators used illegal interrogation methods while questioning him.

June 10: The Moscow City Court rules to keep Platon Lebedev in custody.

June 11: Russia’s General Prosecutor’s office forwards charges against Alexei Pichugin and his alleged accomplice, Alexei Peshkun, to the Moscow City Court. Pichugin is charged with masterminding a murder, attempted murder, and threatening to murder. Peshkun is charged with incitement to murder and attempted murder.

The Swiss Supreme Court declares YUKOS accounts totaling US $1.6 billion are to be unfrozen.

June 15: The Swiss Supreme Court orders the release of bank accounts belonging to YUKOS valued at US $3 billion.

June 16: The first hearing in the Khodorkovsky/Lebedev case is held at the Meshchansky Court. The hearing is postponed until June 23.

The Meshchansky Court refuses Platon Lebedev's request that he be granted bail because of his poor health.

June 18: The Moscow Arbitration Court denies YUKOS’ request to postpone hearings in the US $3.5 billion tax case and put off payment of the tax bill until June 28.

June 21: The Moscow City Court denies Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky bail.

June 22: The Moscow City Court denies Alexei Pichugin's request to extend the deadline for reviewing case materials.

June 23: The Meshchansky Court postpones the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, and Andrei Krainov until July 12.

June 24: The Moscow Arbitration Court lifts a restriction that prevented tax authorities from arresting YUKOS assets in the event that company is found liable for back tax obligations.

June 25: The Moscow Arbitration Court announces it will postpone its decision in the US $3.5 billion tax case for two weeks.

June 25: Preliminary hearings in the Alexei Pichugin case are postponed until July 7.

June 30: Platon Lebedev is transferred from the prison hospital to a cell with 20 other inmates.

The Moscow Arbitration Court finds YUKOS guilty of not having paid US $3.4 billion in taxes in 2000.

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July 2004

July 2: The Russian Tax Ministry issues a second claim against YUKOS for US $3.3 billion for 2001. Court bailiffs freeze YUKOS bank accounts and notify the company it must pay a 2003 tax bill of US $3.4 billion within five days.

July 6: YUKOS announces the company has been declared in default of a US $1 billion loan syndicated by Société Générale.

July 8: The statute of limitations for charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev expires.

July 9: Bailiffs remove computer servers from YUKOS’ registry company, M-Reyestr.

July 12: The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev resumes. The Meshchansky Court rejects appeals for Mr. Lebedev’s transfer to either a hospital facility or home arrest and for a medical examination by an independent party.

July 15: Federal prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin reads a summary of the charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky enters a plea of innocent.

July 16: Platon Lebedev enters a plea of innocent. Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev address the Meshchansky Court and defend their innocent plea.

July 19: Moscow Arbitration Court Judge Olga Mikhailova requests removal from the YUKOS trial due to significant pressure from the media. Judge Mikhailova is the second judge to leave the case.

The Moscow District Federal Arbitration Court upheld a decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court forcing YUKOS to pay its USD 3.4 billion back tax claim immediately.

Appeals filed by defense lawyers are postponed until July 29 in order to allow the lawyers to submit additional documents.

The trial of Alexei Pichugin is postponed to July 28.

July 20: Ministry of Justice announces the pending confiscation of Yuganskneftegaz. Federal prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin begins reading detailed charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

July 21: Judge Igor Petrov is named the replacement judge for Olga Mikhailova in the Moscow Arbitration Court trial of YUKOS.

July 21: The Moscow City Court upholds the legality of freezing bank accounts of YUKOS foreign subsidiaries.

July 23: Russian court bailiffs have confiscated a total of USD 350 million as of July 22.

July 26: The Basmanny Court issues a warrant for the arrest of Leonid Nevzlin. The Russian representative office of Interpol forwards the warrant to Israel where Mr. Nevzlin has citizenship.

July 27: The Moscow City Court rules the order to freeze Swiss bank accounts of defense lawyers Anton Drel and Vasily Aleksanian issued by the Basmanny Court on March 19 is valid.

July 29: The Moscow City Court denies Alexei Pichugin's appeal for bail.

The Moscow City Court rejects the ninth appeal of lawyers representing Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev for their release on bail.

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August 2004

August 3: Russian Tax Ministry announces it will expand its 2001 YUKOS tax investigation and initiate a 2002 investigation.

August 4: Court bailiffs from the Russian Justice Ministry announce it has unfrozen YUKOS bank accounts, allowing the company to continue to fund operating expenses.

August 5: The Russian Justice Ministry announces YUKOS’ bank account have been refrozen.

August 10: Court bailiffs announce the seizure of Yuganskneftegaz, YUKOS’ primary asset.

August 13: The Russian Ministry of Finance appoints German investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein to value YUKOS' Yugansneftegaz oil facility.

August 17: The prosecution rests in its presentation of evidence against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, and Andrei Krainov.

August 19: An ambulance is called to the courtroom for Platon Lebedev at his attorney’s request. He receives an injection to stabilize his blood pressure, and the trial resumes after a one hour break.

The court again refuses to order an independent medical exam for Lebedev, noting that only officials from the Matrosskaya Tishina prison can do so.

August 26: The Moscow Arbitration Court overturns a lower court victory for YUKOS, granting bailiffs permission to levy a US $223 million penalty for its tax collection services.

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September 2004

September 3: The Tax Ministry presents YUKOS with a new US $4.1 billion tax bill for 2001 and announces the company has one day to pay.

September 7: YUKOS announces it stopped paying taxes to five regions due to the financial burden of back tax bills.

September 8: Russian government officials begin to collect on a YUKOS tax bill from 2001, immediately confiscating USD 2.7 billion from YUKOS’ bank accounts.

September 9: The Moscow City court upholds the legality of the arrest warrant for Leonid Nevzlin issued by the Basmanny Court on July 26 at the request of the Prosecutor General.

September 9: The Moscow Arbitration Court declares the YUKOS-Sibneft merger share swap invalid, forcing each party to return the shares and any other compensation they received in the original transaction.

September 10: Judge Irina Kolesnikova upholds Prosecutor Shokhin's request to extend Platon Lebedev's detention period three months. He must now remain in jail through December 26, 2004.

September 13: Investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office search YUKOS’ main offices again while forbidding employees from being present during the search.

September 14: Intermedinvest founder Vadim Murashov testifies his signature was “crudely faked” on documents alleging Intermedinvest’s purchase of 20 percent stake in Apatit.

September 20: Oleg Khvostikov, the former director general of several companies controlled by Khodorkovsky, and Oksana Ipatova, member of the fiscal board for East Siberia's Chita Region and Buryat Area, testify as alleged “accomplices” of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s systematic evasion of taxes.

September 28: Moscow’s Meshchansky court refuses to allow Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a representative of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), to meet with Mr. Khodorkovsky and Mr. Lebedev. This was the second time she was denied a meeting.

September 29: Moscow City Court again denies Platon Lebedev an independent medical examination despite repeated requests by his lawyer.

September 30: Mikhail Khodorkovsky expresses his outrage against accusations of his involvement in organized crime. His statement follows speculation in the print and television media that he is connected to Chechen bandits.

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October 2004

October 2: Mikhail Khodorkovsky defends charges against him by drawing similarities between his actions and the legal LUKoil auction of the state-owned shares.

October 6: Council of Europe Rapporteur on the YUKOS case, Sabine Leutheusser-Scharrenberger, indicates her report to PACE will have unpleasant implications for Russia.

October 7: European politicians and members of European Parliament release an open letter declaring rule of law must be observed in the YUKOS case.

October 12: Lawyer Karinna Moskalenko says Mr. Khodorkovsky’s defense team would appeal his case to the Strasburg Court on Human Rights.

Duma deputy Nikolai Olshansky, member of the United Russia faction, testifies it was positive that the state-owned shares of Apatit went to MENATEP and not to foreign bidders.

October 13: The Moscow City Court rules Platon Lebedev should remain in custody until December 26 despite pleas from his lawyers who argue Mr. Lebedev’s life is at risk due to his poor health.

October 18: Platon Lebedev's defense accuses the Prosecutor General's Office of pressuring witnesses.

October 20: U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher expresses concern about the “forced sale” of Yuganskneftegaz and the treatment of Mr. Khodorkovsky during his trial.

October 21: Lawyer Genrikh Padva predicts Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s trial will end in early 2005.

A report from the think tank Russian Axis says Russian judges are becoming increasingly subordinate to the Kremlin and correspond less and less to international standards.

October 25: Mikhail Khodorkovsky marks the one-year anniversary of his arrest while supporters outside Meshchansky courthouse protest his ongoing detainment.

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November 2004

November 1: The prosecutor’s office requests that the Meshchansky court extend its custody over Mikhail Khodorkovsky three additional months.

November 3: The prosecution rests its case. Defense lawyers Yuri Schmidt and Evgeny Baru say it failed to prove any of the charges against the defendants.

November 5: Lawyer Yuri Schmidt comments that Mikhail Khodorkovsky could spend more than 20 years in prison if convicted on the charges he is facing.

November 9: Platon Lebedev announces he has filed a petition in a district court for libel against Senior Deputy General Prosecutor Yury Biryukov.

November 15: Lawyer Konstantin Rivkin argues the documents of the tax audit contradict each other.

November 16: Platon Lebedev accuses officials in the general prosecutor's office and tax agencies of extortion, providing false information, falsifying documents and libel.

November 19: The Legal Affairs and Human Rights committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopts a provisional draft of a report saying Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were "arbitrarily singled out" by Russian authorities.

November 24: The legal defense for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev presents its arguments against charges the defendants unlawfully purchased shares in Apatit, citing results of an investigation by the former Anti-Monopoly Policy Ministry that concluded there were no legal violations regarding Apatit.

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December 2004

December 1: Platon Lebedev accused the General Prosecutor’s Office of falsifying case material documents charging him of tax fraud.

Meshchansky Court rules to keep Khodorkovsky in jail until February 14, 2005.

December 14: Platon Lebedev’s detention is extended four additional months until March 26, 2005 by the Meshchansky court.

December 17: The defense for Platon Lebedev temporarily rests in its presentation of evidence, allowing Khodorkovsky’s defense team to begin its case while they wait for information requested from the court.

December 21: Mikhail Khodorkovsky issues statement from prison on the forced auction of YUKOS’ prime asset, saying, “They have destroyed the most effective oil company in Russia.”

December 28: Mikhail Khodorkovsky writes a letter from prison on Personal Property and Freedom, later published in Vedomosti, International Herald Tribune and National Post.

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January 2005

January 11: The trial resumes after a holiday recess, with the Meshchansky Court denying a request to summon the two experts who assessed the price of the Apatit company stake and the damage caused by the defendants’ alleged tax evasion.

January 12: Mikhail Khodorkovsky announces that he has transferred his majority stake in Group MENATEP to his partner and fellow MENATEP shareholder, Leonid Nevzlin. Khodorkovsky declares his future is in the building of a civil society.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky makes a rare statement in court during which he criticizes prosecutors for using illegal tactics during the trial and says his faith in the Russian judicial system had been undermined.

January 14: Human Rights Watch names Mikhail Khodorkovsky in its 2005 World Report as a victim of the Russian government’s use of criminal prosecutions against perceived opponents.

January 17: Russia’s Prosecutor General's Office confirms that a new investigation on money laundering was opened against Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Defense attorneys for Platon Lebedev waive their right to call witnesses, saying many people fear testifying in the case.

January 25: Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe pass adopt a resolution which says the arrest and prosecution of YUKOS executives was meant “to weaken an outspoken political opponent, intimidate other wealthy individuals and regain control of strategic economic assets.”

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February 2005

February 3: A new poll from the Levada Center reveals only 10 percent of Russians believe the YUKOS case is being conducted according to law, and 51 percent believe the interests of the Putin administration are driving the case.

February 7: Lawyers for Platon Lebedev conclude the presentation of their defense after three months of presenting arguments to the court. The defense for Mikhail Khodorkovsky begins to present its case.

February 8: Moscow's Meshchansky Court again refuses to allow Platon Lebedev a medical examination, disregarding recent recommendation from the Council of Europe.

February 10: Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky rest in the presentation of their case.

February 14: Council of Europe Secretary-General Terry Davis says Russia still fails to meet its standards and that Europe’s top human rights body would continue to check on Russian compliance with its code of ethics.

February 15: Moscow’s Meshchansky Court refuses to allow Platon Lebedev an independent medical examination, despite a recommendation from the Council of Europe that he be provided with one.

February 17: U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds the hearing, “Democracy in Retreat in Russia,” during which YUKOS CEO Steven Theede and Group MENATEP Director Tim Osborne explain the Russian government’s attack on YUKOS and urge the U.S. senators to recognize Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev and Alexei Pichugin as political prisoners.

February 18: New York University School of Law and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies holds a forum at which human rights activists and lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky discuss the implications of the case on U.S.-Russian relations.

U.S. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman submit a resolution in the Senate to exclude Russia from the G-8, citing a retreat from democracy as well as "the arrest and prosecution of prominent business leaders who had supported the political opposition."

February 24: U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Slovakia for their summit after a week of speeches by Bush urging European leaders to remind Putin that “our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power and the rule of law.”

February 25: In his first testimony since his trial began eight months ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky declares he is completely innocent of the charges against him. Prosecutor Dmitry Shokin declines to cross-examine him, drawing criticism from observers who said Mr. Shokin should have faced Mr. Khodorkovsky head-on if he was confident in the charges.

February 28: Platon Lebedev, in his first testimony of the trial, also declares he is innocent of the all the charges against him and rebukes the prosecution for its poor work on the case.

February 28: Platon Lebedev denies playing any role in the sale of Apatit.

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March 2005

March 1: The Levada Research Center releases a survey that says 73 percent of Russians polled believe the government uses the police to crack down on political opponents.

March 2: Moscow's Meshchansky court extends the detention of Platon Lebedev until June 26, 2005.

March 3: Economic Development Minister German Gref says half of Russia’s tax code needs to be rewritten because is too vague and open to interpretation.

March 9: Lawyers for Platon Lebedev call for the disqualification of the three judges in the trial on the grounds that they are biased and have predetermined the guilt of the defendants.

March 10: YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina goes on a hunger strike to protest the investigating officer's refusal to let her have telephone conversations with her children.

March 15: The Russian tax authorities seek to increase total tax claims against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev for approximately US $400,000 and US $325,000, respectively.

March 16: The Meshchansky Court rejects for the fourth time an appeal from the defense to acquit Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev of charges of fraudulently taking ownership of a 20 percent stake in the Apatit company.

March 17: Transparency International criticizes President Putin in its 2005 Global Corruption Report for taking selective measures to target his opponents.

March 19: A U.K. judge denies the Russian government’s extradition request of two YUKOS employees currently in London on the grounds that their prosecution, including that of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was politically motivated.

March 22: Russia's Constitutional Court clarifies in a recent decision that a method of pre-trial detention, applicable in the case of Platon Lebedev, is unconstitutional.

March 24: The jury in the trial of Alexei Pichugin, former head of economic security at YUKOS, finds him guilty of two murders and one attempted murder.

The Meshchansky Court in Moscow rules on its own initiative to extend the detention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky for an additional two months until July 14, 2005. Genrikh Padva, defense lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said the decision is illegal.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev again plead not guilty in Moscow’s Meshchansky Court on all the charges and claims they are facing, describing the tax bodies’ new demands as “extortion.”

March 25: Russian prosecutors demand that Alexei Pichugin be jailed for life. Mr. Pichugin’s defense team says it will appeal the guilty verdict against their client.

March 25: Constitutional Court Judge Anatoly Kononov says that the Meshchansky Court's decision to prolong the term in custody of Mikhail Khodorkovsky may be revised if it is not based on the Constitution Court's March 22 ruling on this issue.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky says during a hearing that other YUKOS shareholders, namely Leonid Nevzlin, have offered to pay the tax authorities the debt owed by himself and Platon Lebedev.

March 28: The nine-month trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky enters its final stage as prosecutors insist in final arguments that the former YUKOS CEO’s guilt had been proven.

A Russian court convicts the director and curator of the Andrei Sakharov Museum for “inciting religious hatred” with an exhibition of paintings and sculptures that were critical to the Russian Orthodox Church and its growing influence over national politics.

March 30: The Moscow City Court sentences Alexei Pichugin to 20 years imprisonment for complicity in murder. Read more »

Prosecutors called for the maximum 10 year prison sentence for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. The Meshchansky Court rules to dismiss the charge related to the privatization of Apatit.

Tax authorities demand that over USD $610 million worth of taxes be recovered from Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev on account of the tax evasion charges made against their organizations, and more than USD $4.67 million on account of the tax evasion charges made against them as individuals.

March 31: The Moscow City Court rejects an appeal for Platon Lebedev to be released on bail.

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April 2005

April 1: Attorney Genrikh Padva suggests Khodorkovsky could be freed under the traditional presidential amnesty granted on May 9th coinciding with Russia’s World War II victory celebrations.

April 3: Former Moscow court justice Olga Kudeshkina issues a harsh attack on the Kremlin for its continuing prosecution of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

April 4: Karina Moskalenko files a protest in the Moscow City Court against the Meshchansky Court’s decision to extend Khodorkovsky’s custody until July 14, saying it conflicts with a decision from Russia’s Constitutional Court.

April 5: Attorney Genrikh Padva presents his final arguments, rejecting the claims from the prosecution that Khodorkovsky was part of a criminal group.

April 6: US $5 million in income taxes allegedly owed by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is paid by Group MENATEP's Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, who also say the payment is not an admission of guilt.

April 8: The tax authorities in Moscow’s Meshchansky Court refuse to accept the US $5 million that Group MENATEP managers have paid for tax debts of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev because they say the payment was unclear and has been made by third parties.

Khodorkovsky’s defense lawyers wrap up closing arguments, calling the whole trial one big technical mistake and asking for Khodorkovsky to be acquitted of all charges.

April 11: Mikhail Khodorkovsky makes his final statement in Meshchansky Court and declares his innocence of the charges against him. "I love Russia and I believe in its future as a strong and law governed state," he says in front of a packed courtroom.

Judge Kolesnikova declares the ten-month trial against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to be over. She announces the verdict will be given on April 27.

April 12: Amnesty International says in a statement that Khodorkovsky is being persecuted for his political activities.

Khodorkovsky’s foreign legal team say they expected a guilty verdict on the politically motivated charges.

April 14: Alexei Pichugin now faces new murder charges, according to a representative from Russia’s General Prosecutor’s Office

April 15: State prosecutor Kamil Kashaev holds a press conference during which he claims that Boris Khodorkovsky, the father of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, knew about crimes committed by his son's employees. The senior Khodorkovsky dismissed the allegations as lies.

April 17: Leonid Nevzlin is set to file actions in international courts against the Kremlin chief of staff Dmitry Medvedev, Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin and the co-owner of Sibneft and Chukotka governor Roman Abramovich for damages that led to the bankruptcy of YUKOS.

Russia’s State Duma approved a second reading of legislation that would make significant changes in the lower house by ending the election of independent deputies and making it more difficult for smaller parties to claim seats.

April 18: Group of Seven leading industrial nations announces Russia will not join the G7 or guide its economic policy deliberations next year.

April 19: YUKOS' two remaining major production subsidiaries, Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz, plus two of its five refineries—Syzran and Angarsk—are frozen by a Moscow court.

April 20: United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice renews her criticism of Russia's democratic record and says President Vladimir Putin has too much personal power.

April 21: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she told Russian officials that the world would be watching the outcome of the criminal case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and that “this is going to have a tremendous impact on how both the investment climate and Russia's political future are viewed in the international community.”

A Moscow City court rejects an appeal filed by Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Karina Moskalenko regarding the decision by the Meshchansky Court to extend Mikhail Khodorkovsky's detention until the middle of July.

April 23: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says that he does not intend to extradite MENATEP shareholders however much Putin insists during the first visit of a Russian leader to Israel.

April 25: About 100 people hold a rally in defense of former head of YUKOS Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the centre of the Siberian city of Tomsk.

Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin says the YUKOS case was a serious lesson for both the authorities and businesses and he hoped such situations would be avoided in the future.

April 26: President Putin seeks to curb rising concerns about the country's political direction and business climate in his annual speech.

April 27: The reading of the verdict in the trial of jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is postponed until May 16. No official explanation was given for the delay.

April 28: Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office announces it has finished its investigation into the embezzlement charges against Svetlana Bakhmina, and that the case is ready to go to court.

A letter from the International Advisory Board to Group MENATEP is accepted by the Meshchansky Court into the case records. The letter expresses gratitude to Platon Lebedev for his successful and exemplary management of Group MENATEP, noting, "Under the leadership of Mr. Lebedev and others, the company was one of the first champions of corporate governance and transparency among Russian businesses." Download the letter »

April 29: A record sum of about US $19 billion is expatriated from Russia in the first quarter of 2005 – the largest amount in the history of modern Russian.

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May 2005

May 3: U.S. Congressmen Christopher Cox (R-CA) Tom Lantos (D-CA) introduce a bi-partisan bill urging the suspension of Russia's membership in the Group of 8 nations until the country adheres to international norms and standards of democracy.

May 10: Moscow Helsinki Group chairwoman Lyudmila Alexeyeva complains to President George W. Bush in a private meeting with representatives of Russian civil groups during his trip to Moscow that Russian businessmen have sharply cut their funding to democracy organizations since the government’s clampdown on YUKOS and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

May 13: The Office of the Russian Prosecutor General announces it plans to file additional money laundering-related charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev in the near future.

May 16: On the day when verdict is expected to be delivered in the Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev case, the judges begin reading from a 1,300 page document which would continue for over two weeks. Though defense lawyers signal it is clear their clients would be found guilty on most charges, the world would need to wait until the document was read before a guilty sentence was officially given.

Milan Horcek, member of the human rights commission in the European Parliament, attends the first day of the reading of the verdict and says, “This is not Europe.”

A noisy rally in support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky outside Meshchansky Court ends in clashes with law enforcers, with police detaining 28 people, including Yabloko deputy head Sergei Mitrokhin, and beating former chess champion Garry Kasparov with batons.

May 17: Former deputy chairman of the YUKOS board, Aleksandr Temirko, is placed on Russia’s wanted list.

May 19: Congressmen Tom Lantos and Christopher Cox, co-chairs of the Russian Democracy Caucus, introduce legislation urging members of the G8 to revoke Russian membership as long as it continues to trample democratic principles.

Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov calls the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky a “judicial farce.”

May 23: Massive road repairs appear on the street that Khodorkovsky supporters were given a permit to hold their protest.

May 25: Amnesty International says it is concerned the case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky is politically motivated.

May 26: Sergei Burov, deputy director of Yuganskneftegaz, is seriously wounded by an unknown gunman who shoots him several times in the stomach as he leaves his home in the early morning.

May 31: On the 12th day of the reading of the verdict, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev are convicted by the Meshchansky court in 6 out of 7 charges against them related to tax evasion and fraud and sentenced to 9 years in a Siberian labor camp, minus time already served.

U.S. Representative Tom Lantos, who was denied from witnessing the final verdict, declares in front of Moscow’s Meshchansky Court: “This political trial, tried before this kangaroo court, has come to a shameful conclusion.”

U.S. President George W. Bush comments during a press conference that Mikhail Khodorkovsky “looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial.”

The non-profit democracy watchdog Freedom House issues a press release which says the conviction and sentencing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky underscores the serious erosion of the rule of law and growing intolerance for political dissent in Russia.

The Russian Club of Records says the verdict in the Khodorkovsky case is now the world's longest-read sentence in history.

Long-time friend and colleague Leonid Nevzlin held an international press conference in Israel in response to the sentencing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Download the transcript »

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June 2005

June 2: The U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the U.S. Helsinki Commission) releases a statement expressing disappointment in the conviction and sentence of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, saying the case appeared to be justice directed by politics.

Council of Europe Rapporteur on the YUKOS case, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, says that legal security does not exist in Russia and recommends that the German business community refrain from investing in Russia following the conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

June 6: Russia's Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin says he believes the result of the appeals process in the Khodorkovsky case will be materially different from the verdict handed down by the Meshchansky Court.

June 6: Attorney Yuri Schmidt files a writ of appeal to the Moscow City Court addressing the charge of personal tax evasion against Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Defense lawyers receive copies of the sentence handed down on May 31 by the Meshchansky Court.

June 9: Mikhail Khodorkovsky's defense team, led by attorney Genrikh Padva, file a write of appeal to the Moscow City Court.

June 8: A survey from the Aspen Institute shows a majority of elites in Europe and the U.S. are concerned about Russian retreat from democracy, and that growing authoritarianism, illustrated by the prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is problematic for the West.

June 9: Antonio Valdes-Garcia, the chief executive of Fargoil, a company associated with YUKOS, is arrested upon entering Russia as part of a probe into alleged tax fraud. YUKOS press service denounces the detention and expresses concern over the state of Valdes-Garcia health. Download the statement »

June 10: Attorney Karina Moskalenko files a writ of appeal to the Moscow City Court detailing violations of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Right during the Khodorkovsky trial.

June 12: A rally and concert in support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is held in Moscow with over 2,000 attendees. In attempting to disrupt the rally, police say the organizers would need to appear in court because the turnout far exceeded the expected turnout of 250 people.

June 15: Lawyer Genrikh Padva says the appeals filed by the defense team of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev will be considered no earlier than October.

June 17: Platon Lebedev refuses to attend court during examination of his cassation appeal against his 9-year sentence, saying he would not pretend the proceedings were legitimate and would instead wait to appear before the Supreme Court of Russia and the European Court of Human Rights.

In a written appeal to the Moscow City Court, Mikhail Khodorkovsky says the ruling of the Meshchansky Court was based on conjecture and falsifications. He calls the city court to redeem the reputation of Russia's judicial system and uphold the principle of rule of law.

June 21: The World Bank releases a report saying Russia's progress in judicial reforms since 1990 has been one of the slowest in the countries of former Soviet Union.

June 21: The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations holds a hearing on U.S. policy toward Russia. Senator Joe Biden says no recent event in Russia exemplified the Kremlin’s growing authoritarianism more clearly than the conviction and sentencing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

June 26: Mikhail Khodorkovsky celebrates his 42nd birthday from the confines of a Moscow prison. Approximately 2,500 people from 14 countries call a hotline to congratulate the former YUKOS chief on his birthday and roughly 1,300 people write emails of support.

June 28: European Court of Human Rights President Luzius Wildhaber confirms YUKOS’ complaint against the Russian government, in addition to a suit filed by Platon Lebedev on the basis of the European Covenant of Human Rights, will be given priority attention.

June 30: Presidential aide Igor Shuvalov says the YUKOS affair has had a negative effect on Russia's image and it will take several years to restore it.

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July 2005

July 2: Platon Lebedev marks the second anniversary of the day of his arrest.

July 5: Russian prosecutors file new murder and attempted murder charges against former YUKOS economic security chief Alexei Pichugin, also implicating YUKOS shareholder Leonid Nevzlin. Mr. Nevzlin says the new charges amount to persecution for political reasons.

A poll from the Levada Research Center shows that 11 percent of Russians would vote for Mikhail Khodorkovsky for president, 3 percentage points more than in May.

July 6: The Moscow City Court extends the stay in custody for YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina until August 7.

July 7: The Prosecutor General’s Office summons Khodorkovsky’s lawyers to Matrosskaya Tishina prison with the expectation new charges will be announced against their client. No new charges are announced.

YUKOS shareholder Leonid Nevzlin responds to the new charges brought against Alexei Pichugin and himself, as well as additional charges expected to be brought against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. "The Kremlin continues its political show designed to legalize the plundering of YUKOS and destroy Khodorkovsky," he says. Read more »

July 11: Russian prosecutors open a criminal investigation into ex-prime minister and outspoken Kremlin critic Mikhail Kasyanov. Mr. Kasyanov had publicly criticized the dismantling of YUKOS before President Putin fired him in February 2004.

July 13: During his visit to the U.S., Leonid Nevzlin speaks before the Helsinki Commission in the U.S. Congress about the political and economic implications of the YUKOS case, saying Moscow should not be allowed to head the Group of Eight as scheduled in 2006. Download the statement »

July 14: Russia’s Supreme Court upholds the conviction of Alexei Pichugin at an appeal hearing. Defense lawyers say they intend to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

July 20: President Vladimir Putin says Russia will not tolerate foreign money being used to finance the political activities of non-governmental organizations.

July 25: Arbitration court judge Vlada Bliznets is relieved of her duties at the request of the Russian Federal Tax Service which was apparently angered by her past rulings in favor of YUKOS.

July 26: The independent think-tank Indem says the total value of bribes in Russia has risen 10 times over the past four years.

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August 2005

August 1: In a landmark political essay, Mikhail Khodorkovsky explains why Russia must make a turn to the left to avoid an authoritarian future.

Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev begin studying the transcript of the court sessions.

August 2: YUKOS Receives Selective Treatment from General Prosecutor over Employee Remuneration - YUKOS Oil Company has announced that the General Prosecutor has begun an investigation into the remuneration of 1600 individual members of staff during the years 2001, 2002 and 2003. The Prosecutor's Office alleges that YUKOS payment methods were unlawful during the 3-year span.Download the release  »

August 4: Mikhail Khodorkovsky says senior Kremlin aide Igor Sechin was the “motor” behind the prosecution of him and his company, YUKOS.

August 8: The Moscow City Court refuses to order an independent medical examination for YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina despite pleas from her lawyer to be seen by a psychoneurologist.

August 9: Lawyers for Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are notified they would need to finish reading the minutes of the court hearing by August 25. Lawyer Elena Liptser said this request is illegal and violates the lawyers’ rights for defense.

Days after his widely-discussed essay, “A Turn to the Left,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky is transferred to an overcrowded cell with 11 other detainees, with no right to read newspapers or watch television.

August 10: Mikhail Khodorkovsky says he would consider running for parliament in a by-election in December.

Platon Lebedev is moved from a prison hospital to a general cell. His lawyer Timofei Gridnev says the move is part of the authorities’ plans to speed up the appeal process.

August 12: Lawyer Anton Drel says Platon Lebedev’s health has seriously deteriorated due to being refused a medical examination and medicine.

August 15: The number of inmates in Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s cell increases to 16.

August 17: The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upholds the arrest warrant on YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina.

August 19: Platon Lebedev is moved from a general cell to a punishment cell for a week for refusing to take walk in the exercise yard.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky goes on a hunger strike to demonstrate support for his friend and business partner Platon Lebedev. Lawyer Anton Drel announces the news on August 23, and confirms Khodorkovsky is consuming neither food nor water.

August 22: Lawyers for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev say courts records they received are incomplete and that 3000 pages are missing.

August 24: The Moscow City Court introduces a new law to limit the access of journalists to cover trials, requiring them to apply for one-year accreditations.

Moscow’s Meshchansky Court refuses Platon Lebedev and his lawyers more time to study minutes of the trial.

August 24: Approximately 150 activists gather in front of Matrosskaya Tishina prison to support Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s hunger strike against the prison authorities’ treatment of Platon Lebedev.

August 25: Lawyer Genrikh Padva says Khodorkovsky’s condition has deteriorated because of his hunger strike. His movements are slow and his articulation is less clear.

Platon Lebedev is moved back to a regular cell after almost a week of solitary confinement.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky ends his hunger strike late in the day after hearing on the evening news about Platon Lebedev’s transfer.

August 26: Defense lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky say they have been notified the Moscow City Court will begin appeal hearings on September 14, far sooner than expected.

August 30: Platon Lebedev files a complaint against Meshchansky Court Judge Irina Kolesnikova for reducing the time given to examine court records. Defense lawyers say the court records are also incomplete.

A poll by the Levada Center finds about one-third of Russians already support Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s bid for parliament or do not see anything bad in it.

August 31: After weeks of speculation in the media, Mikhail Khodorkovsky declares he will run for a parliamentary seat in a by-election in December for the Universitetsky district in Moscow.

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September 2005

September 1: Moscow’s Meshchansky Court rejects remarks on the court records from Platon Lebedev’s lawyers and says there have been no violations.

September 5: Platon Lebedev sends a request to the Prosecutor General’s Office demanding a criminal case be launched against Meshchansky Court Judge Irina Kolesnikova for malicious law violations against him during court sessions.

September 7: Mikhail Khodorkovsky sends an official letter of notification to the election authorities announcing his intention to run for a seat in Russia’s State Duma.

September 8: The Basmanny District Court of Moscow rules the Prosecutor General’s Office should not have refused Leonid Nevzlin access to the case files related to the charges against him.

September 12: Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev ask Moscow City Court’s criminal judicial board to cancel the September 14 hearing due to legal violations in the appeals process thus far.

September 13: Platon Lebedev announces he will give up his right to legal representation in the appeal against his conviction because he considers it a waste of his and his lawyers’ time. He will instead focus on preparing for dialogue with Russia’s Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Platon Lebedev is moved to an isolation ward.

September 14: The appeal hearing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is postponed to September 19 due to Khodorkovsky’s key lawyer, Genrikh Padva, being hospitalized the night before.

The Swiss Bankers Association announces that Swiss prosecutors were too quick to accommodate Russian requests to block bank accounts linked to YUKOS. Prosecutors should examine whether demands are politically motivated before complying, it says.

September 16: Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky are barred from meeting with their client due to his detention cell being under a strict quarantine. No information was provided for why the quarantine was in place or how long it would last.

September 19: Appeal hearings are again postponed to the following day on Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s insistence they not proceed without Genrikh Padva.

September 20: With Genrikh Padva saying he should be out of the hospital in 2-3 days, the appeal hearings are postponed to September 22. Mikhail Khodorkovsky says Yuri Schmidt will be prepared to represent him if Padva is unable.

September 21: Mikhail Khodorkovsky's campaign team believes his application to run for parliament has been lost in the post and is blaming the Kremlin for “dirty tricks.” Khodorkovsky mailed his application to the election authorities on September 13, but they have not received the documents.

September 22: After only one day of hearing arguments, the Moscow City Court rejects Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s appeal against his conviction on fraud and tax evasion, but decreases his prison sentence from nine to eight years. The defense reacts furiously, accusing the Court of not giving Khodorkovsky a fair appeal.

September 23: The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office requests that Khodorkovsky’s lawyers, including Yuri Schmidt, Anton Drel, Denis Dyatlev, Karinna Moskalenko, Elena Levina, Igor Mikheev, Albert Mkrtychev, Vladimir Sergeev and Irina Artukhovoi, with the exception of Genrikh Padva, be stripped of their law licenses.

Khodorkovsky’s Canadian attorney, Robert Amsterdam, has his visa revoked and is told to leave Russia or face arrest.

September 26: Mikhail Khodorkovsky is denied access to two of his lawyers on grounds that the prison has yet to receive official notification that the appeal court has upheld his conviction.

September 27: The campaign team for Mikhail Khodorkovsky announces a replacement will be named later this week to run from Moscow’s Universitetsky electoral district in the December by-election for a seat in Russia’s State Duma. Khodorkovsky is now ineligible to run for election because the Appeals Court upheld his conviction.

September 30: Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s and Platon Lebedev’s defense attorneys announce that they cannot prepare appeals for the Moscow City Court presidium or the European Court on Human Rights in Strasburg until they have been provided with the verdict’s statement of reason. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev received only a portion of the decision, which is a “gross violation of the law,” according to their attorneys.

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October 2005

October 4: Defense lawyers say Khodorkovsky finally received a copy of the full cassational ruling from the Moscow City Court and has decided to file an appeal.
YUKOS loses an appellate court ruling that opens the door to the possible seizure of assets.

October 5: Russian prosecutors launch a series of raids at banks, businesses and offices associated with YUKOS and Mikhail Khodorkovsky in what appears to be the preamble to new charges. Dutch police search the Amsterdam office of a YUKOS subsidiary that manages the oil company's overseas assets. Khodorkovsky’s legal counsel Anton Drel’s offices are searched as is Khodorkovsky’s foundation “Open Russia.”

October 10: Defense lawyers say Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev have been moved from their holding cell near Moscow and are believed to be en route to a Russian prison camp to serve the rest of their sentences.

YUKOS denies accusations from the Russian authorities, directed against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Natalia Chernysheva, that its two Netherlands-based subsidiaries were involved in any illegal activity. Read more »

October 17: Svetlana Bakhmina’s trial begins and she pleads not guilty.

October 19: Defense lawyers confirm Platon Lebedev has been sent to a prison in the Russian Arctic region of Yamalo-Nenets where conditions are very harsh. Lebedev's relatives receive notification that he was sent to a prison in the remote province, nearly 1,200 miles from Moscow.

October 20: Defense lawyers confirm Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to a penal colony in Siberia not far from the Chinese border to serve his 8-year sentence, sparking outrage amongst his supporters. The prison in the Chita region, “YaG 14/10,” is known for its radioactive contamination.

Members of the Russian Parliament are asked by a support group to stand bail for ex-YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina. Read more »

October 21: The Moscow Bar Association concludes there is no evidence to disbar three of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's attorneys. Earlier this month, the Prosecutor General's Office requested that Anton Drel, Yelena Levina and Denis Dyatlev be disbarred for "breaching lawyers' ethics.”

October 24: Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Press Center states that Khodorkovsky is creating a center to support prisoners. The center is currently being registered and prominent human rights organizations will have their representatives on the board of the new center.

Parliamentarian Alexei Kondaurov says he will post bail for ex-YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina for the duration of her trial. Read more »

October 26: Russian Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko is served notice of a lawsuit by U.S. shareholders in YUKOS. Twelve shareholders of YUKOS American Depositary Receipts filed suit against the Russian government, four state-owned energy giants and a host of high-ranking government officials, accusing them of securities fraud in the de facto re-nationalization of YUKOS.

Russia's Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin confirms that he received a letter from Russian human rights organizations in defense of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev and says that he will send an inquiry to the Prosecutor General's Office and other agencies.

October 27: Khodorkovsky’s attorneys say they will appeal his sentence because they think it is too severe.

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November 2005

November 1: Lawyers for Platon Lebedev say they will appeal the transfer of their client to the penal colony in the Polar Urals.

November 3: Prison authorities decide to stop providing journalists with information about Mikhail Khodorkovsky. From now on, journalists will only be able to obtain information about Khodorkovsky from his relatives or lawyers.

November 8: Preliminary hearings on former YUKOS executive Alexander Temerko’s case continue in London

November 9: Russian Duma Deputy Galina Khovanskaya said in a press release she would personally vouch for former YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina, the second parliamentarian to do so. Read more »

November 10: Platon Lebedev’s lawyers appeal to a Moscow court to acknowledge that the transfer of their client to a penal colony in Western Siberia was illegal.

Russian legal authorities refuse a motion by prosecutors to disbar Mikhail Khodorkovsky’ lawyer Yuri Schmidt. Schmidt celebrates his victory by vowing to take Khodorkovsky’s case to the European Court of Human Rights.

November 16: A group of Russian human rights activists accuse the Russian government of violating the human rights of its citizens, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, and urges Western Europe to stop President Vladimir Putin from returning to a "totalitarian past."

November 21: The United States Senate declares in a bipartisan Senate Resolution that it is necessary to change the imprisonment locations of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

A bill passes the Russian Duma that, if it eventually becomes law, will require registration and oversight of all Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), prohibit foreigners without residency permits from working at NGOs, and prevent foreign groups from operating in Russia unless they could reinvent themselves as local organizations. Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s foundation, Open Russia, could be forced to close.

November 24: Mikhail Elfimov, a former YUKOS vice-president, requests political asylum from Latvia.

November 30: The Basmanny Court of Moscow upholds the arrest of Dmitry Gololobov, a senior YUKOS lawyer, in his absentia under the new charge of laundering illegally earned money.

A Russian court repeals an earlier ruling upholding a request by a syndicate of Western banks to force YUKOS to repay an outstanding debt of US $475 million.

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December 2005

December 2: Investigators seize documents at VSMPO-Avisma, the world's largest titanium-producer, in connection with an ongoing investigation into Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky say they will file an appeal of his transfer to a prison colony in East Siberia. Lawyers also will file a new appeal before the European Court of Human Rights.

Alexei Kurtsin, a former senior YUKOS official, is sentenced to 14 years in a maximum-security prison, an unusually harsh sentence for the white-collar crimes he is purported to have committed.

Pavel Ivlev, a former YUKOS lawyer, makes a statement proclaiming his innocence, and that the embezzlement accusations brought against him are "absurd and not reflective of either law or reality." Read more »

December 5: An attorney for YUKOS lawyer Pavel Ivlev appealed against the arrest warrant issued in his client's absentia. Read more »

The Basmanny District Court in Moscow granted permission to the Prosecutor General's Office to issue the arrest warrant in absentia for former YUKOS lawyer Pavel Ivlev.

December 6: Russian human rights activists visit Khodorkovsky's prison in Krasnokamensk and say he is a political prisoner.

The Basmanny District Court in Moscow granted permission to the Prosecutor General's Office to issue the arrest warrant in absentia for former YUKOS lawyer Pavel Ivlev.

December 8: The European Parliament sends Platon Lebedev a letter expressing support and wishing him happy birthday.

December 9: Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s attorneys file a second appeal with the Moscow City Court against their client's conviction on tax evasion and fraud charges. Platon Lebedev's attorneys say they will also file a second appeal later this year.

December 14: The Moscow City Court overturns an order by the city's Basmanny Court to make records available to Leonid Nevzlin’s defense lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov.

December 15: YUKOS CFO Bruce Misamore submits his resignation saying he can do nothing more for the company while it continues to be the target of “groundless attacks from the Russian government.”

A Council of Europe representative tells a British Court that she fears former senior vice-president of YUKOS, Alexander Temerko, will not receive a fair trial if returned to Russia to face fraud charges. 

December 19: The Federal Arbitration Court for Moscow district upholds a previous court decision that declared the YUKOS-Moscow executive board’s decision to file for bankruptcy protection in Houston, Texas, invalid.

December 21: The Moscow City Court upholds an arrest warrant issued by the Moscow Basmanny Court for YUKOS lawyer Pavel Ivlev. Read more »

December 26: The Moscow City Court upholds the arrest in absentia of chief lawyer of YUKOS Dmitry Gololobov. Read more »

Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky Court rules that the Federal Penitentiary Service must provide information proving that Platon Lebedev could not be transferred to colonies in neighboring regions due to lack of vacant cells.

December 27: Andrei Illarionov, the Kremlin’s outspoken economic adviser, resigns, saying he can no longer work in a government that has done away with political freedoms.

Platon Lebedev's lawyers file a complaint with the Moscow City Court presidium against the conviction of their client.

Former head of Russia's Federal Property Fund Vladimir Malin was given a four year suspended sentence by Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky Court on charges of assisting former YUKOS executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to avoid investment obligations. Read more »

December 30: Lawyers for Alexei Pichugin, the former head of YUKOS’ security service, send a new complaint against the Russian judiciary to the European Court of Human Rights.

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January 2006

January 9: The Swiss Supreme Court issues a ruling blocking the transfer of bank documents to Russia for its investigation into YUKOS because Moscow provided insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.

January 10: A YUKOS source has said that the company is prepared to use its stake in Yuganskneftegaz, as well as YUKOS’ non-core assets to repay its tax arrears.

January 11: The Russian General procuarcy will not appeal a London court decision to refuse to extradite former YUKOS Vice President Alexander Temerko to Russia.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office refuted a statement by former YUKOS vice president Alexander Temerko claiming that the office would not appeal a London court ruling that rejected a request for his extradition to Russia. “The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has not sent any letters to Great Britain since the verdict was announced,” Prosecutor General's Office spokesman Natalia Vishnyakova said.

The Moscow Basmanny Court rejected an appeal from lawyers of former YUKOS security chief Alexei Pichugin, ruling that investigators of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office had not violated his rights as claimed, a court spokesman said.

January 12: YUKOS announced that it had been paid the dividend due to it from fellow crude producer Sibneft, and will use it to help repay its alleged “back taxes” for 1999-2003.

January 13: Russia's finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, was served with a civil lawsuit yesterday by a group of American shareholders in YUKOS. The suit alleges that he violated US securities laws by "falsely assuring" the public that the Kremlin did not intend to renationalize YUKOS.

January 16: Prosecutor Alexander Kulebyakov filed a request with a cassation instance to revert the sentence for Vladimir Malin, head of Russia Federal Property Fund. Kulebyakov believes Malin, who has been handed down a provisional four year sentence, should be convicted to seven years of prison.

January 17: Lawyers for Alexei Pichugin filed another complaint with the European Court of Human Rights claiming that he did not receive a fair trial and was mistreated in jail. In their complaint, the lawyers accuse the Russian judiciary of violating Articles 3 (covering torture) and 6 (guaranteeing a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

January 18: YUKOS says it has been hit with a back-tax bill for 2004 for approximately US $3.5 billion. “YUKOS on Dec. 27, 2005 was served an audit act containing tax claims totaling 107 billion rubles, approximately US $3.5 billion,” the company said in a statement.

January 19: YUKOS is planning to file official objections to a new $3.8 billion back tax claim for 2004. On December 25, 2005, the tax authorities charged YUKOS US $3.8 billion in unpaid tax claims following an audit of the company's activities in 2004. The claims include US $1.9 billion in tax arrears, US $1.5 billion in fines and US $390 million in penalty fees.

January 31: Lithuania’s migration service announced that it granted asylum to Igor Babenko, a Russian banker with close ties to YUKOS. Babenko was detained previously in Lithuania on an international arrest warrant issued by Russia, where he is wanted for money laundering charges amounting to $11 million. Babenko claimed he was a target of Russia’s political vendetta against YUKOS.

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February 2006

February 1: YUKOS sent an appeal to the Federal Tax Service against a $3.5 billion back tax claim for 2004.

Despite having paid off $21.3 billion in tax claims to Russian authorities, YUKOS still has an outstanding debt of $9.8 billion, according to a company press release. However, the press release also announced the company’s intentions to appeal a recent $3.5 claim levied in December 2005, and if successful, the action would reduce total YUKOS debts to $6.3 billion.

February 3: A Siberian court has handed a three-year suspended sentence for tax evasion to the former head of Yuganskneftegas. Tagirzyan Gilmanov, who directed Yuganskneftegaz from 1999 to 2001, used false information to allow the company to avoid paying taxes over the period. The district court of Nefteyugansk, where Yuganskneftegaz is based, convicted and sentenced him on Saturday.

February 7: Lawyers for the Russian government have filed a petition asking for 60 days to consider a claim in U.S. courts by YUKOS minority shareholders, when they receive it. With the petition, Russian authorities admit that the claim will eventually reach them, after two attempts to serve papers on Russian Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin and Energy Minister Victor Khristenko when they were last in the United States.

February 14: Rosneft has agreed with Societe Generale to settle the debt claimed from Yuganskneftegaz in pledge of payment of the $1 billion loan granted to YUKOS.

February 15: Rosneft president Sergei Bogdanchikov was served with a lawsuit by U.S.-based holders of American Depository Receipts (ADR's) of YUKOS while he was in London on Tuesday. The move is the latest in a series of public gestures which have also included serving writs on Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Energy and Industry Minister Viktor Khristenko. The current suit has been filed in district court in Washington, DC.

February 17: Alexei Pichugin, the former YUKOS security service official who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, is requesting that a new trial be held for the criminal charges levelled against him. Read more »

February 22: The Moscow branch of the Federal Arbitration Court today rejected a YUKOS appeal in which the company attempted to prevent foreign creditors from collecting $482 million. In doing so, the court reaffirmed a decision taken by the Moscow Arbitration Court on October 21, 2005. The 2005 verdict upheld in the Russian Federation a London High Court decision to allow foreign creditors to collect debts from YUKOS totalling $482 million.

February 24: YUKOS is planning to contest a decision to launch an investigation into the activities of Luxemburg based subsidiary YUKOS Capital S.a.r.l.

February 26: The Moscow Appeals Court cancelled Sunday a decision to charge Samaraneftegaz, a key YUKOS production asset, more than $5.85 million in back taxes for January 2005. The disputed back tax claim had been launched by the Federal Tax Service on July 18, 2005. The court also turned down a counter-claim from the Russian tax authorities.

YUKOS Capital S.a.r.l., the Luxemburg based subsidiary of the YUKOS Oil Company, was seeking to recover a $450 million debt from Yuganskneftegaz and its current owner Rosneft prior to being the subject of an investigation carried out by the Luxemburg authorities.

YUKOS calls for Russia to stop misusing European Convention on mutual assistance. A YUKOS spokesman responded to the recent investigations into the actions of Luxemburg subsidiary YUKOS Capital S.a.r.l. by decrying Russia’s abuse of international cooperation agreements.

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March 2006

March 1: Supreme Court of the Russian Federation voided a Samara regional court’s ruling to dismiss charges against Elena Marochkina, the Chief Accountant of YUKOS subsidiary Samaraneftegaz. The prosecution claimed she participated in establishing of fraudulent scheme on tax evasion in 2000. However, a regional Samara court dropped the charges in 2005 after Marochkina was able to fully compensate for the tax debt, which measured roughly $130 million.

March 4: The prosecution has called for a 10-year sentence for Dmitry Velichko, the former head of YUKOS subsidiary company Rosinkor, to be served in a high security prison facility. Velichko will present his final statement on March 9, after which the panel of judges will retire to chambers to formulate their ruling.

March 6: Former YUKOS security chief Alexei Pichugin, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted of organizing a double murder, faces a new trial in Russia on two additional murder charges. Pichugin is now being charged with the 1998 murders of Russian businesswoman Valentina Korneyeva and Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov.

March 13: GML, an investment group with a large shareholding in Russian oil major YUKOS, believes Rosneft may be behind a lawsuit in which YUKOS creditor banks are seeking to bankrupt the Russian firm. GML Managing Director Tom Osborne was quoted Monday as saying: “I believe the banks’ suit is a blow from Rosneft.

Moscow's Basmanny Court Monday sentenced Dmitry Velichko, the former head of YUKOS subsidiary company Rosinkor, to five years in prison after finding him guilty of money laundering and fraud. Velichko had previously pleaded “not guilty” to charges of embezzling roughly $10 million from the federal budget and laundering $850,000.

Preliminary hearings on the new charges brought against former YUKOS security chief Alexei Pichugin are scheduled to begin on March 20 in the Moscow City Court. Pichugin, who is already serving a 20-year prison sentence for allegedly organizing a double murder, is facing a new trial on two additional murder charges.

March 15: A consortium of international banks which launched bankruptcy proceedings against YUKOS last Friday had agreed to sell their debt obligations to Russian state-owned Rosneft in December, it was revealed yesterday. The banks confirmed their debt had been sold to Rosneft on December 13, 2005, although some maintained the final transfer was contingent upon the consortium filing bankruptcy claims in a Moscow court.

YUKOS Chief Financial Officer Frank Rieger resigned from his post amid mounting investigations from the Russian authorities. Russian investigators have interrogated Rieger recently on suspicion of involvement in financial fraud.

The Moscow City Court has postponed until March 29 hearings on an appeal against the sentence of Alexei Kurtsin, a former Yukos manager convicted on charges of money laundering.

March 18: Although Yukos has managed to survive massive back tax claims levied against the company by the Russian tax authorities, new lawsuits (such as a bankruptcy filing initatied last week in a Moscow court) threaten to finally bring the oil major down. However, holders of YUKOS American Depository Receipts have gone on the offensive, and are claiming suing Gazprom, Rosneft and various Russian ministers for the expropriation of Yukos' main production unit Yuganskneftegaz.

March 20: Authorities froze the bank accounts of Open Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s philanthropic foundation that supports educational, social and civil rights projects in Russia. Authorities claim the accounts were frozen in response to the criminal proceedings against Khodorkovsky and others connected to the foundation.

March 22: Open Russia, a leading non-government charity group financed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, called for support from its donors after a Russian court froze its assets. The NGO was forced to halt 52 projects when its bank accounts were frozen, interrupting its work defending human rights, training regional journalists and providing charity services to children.

March 24: Prosecutors on Thursday requested that a Moscow court sentence Svetlana Bakhmina, a lawyer who worked for YUKOS, to nine years in prison for embezzlement and tax evasion if found guilty. Bakhmina, who has two young sons, worked as the deputy chief of the Moscow legal department of YUKOS.

March 26:In YUKOS bankruptcy proceedings scheduled to begin Tuesday, the Moscow arbitration court is likely to appoint an external administrator to take control of the remaining YUKOS assets. The bankruptcy suit was initiated by a consortium of international banks led by France’s Society Generale, even though the banks had reportedly sold their debt to Rosneft in December.

March 27: Hearings in the trial of Svetlana Bakhmina have been postponed until March 30 as a result of her being ill. Bakhmina is being charged with embezzlement and tax evasion in connection with her handling of assets belonging to YUKOS subsidiary Tomskneft.

March 29: The Moscow Arbitration Court on Tuesday put YUKOS under the supervision of an external manager in a move that could lead to the company’s bankruptcy and nationalization. According to the court ruling, all asset sales will have to go through court appointed manager Eduard Rebgun, who was proposed for the position by Rosneft.

March 31: The civil plaintiff in the case against Svetlana Bakhmina, Sandheights Ltd, filed additional documents in the case yesterday asking for the court to renew a criminal investigation in to Bakhmina’s activities so that the company may file a civil suit. However, Bakhmina noted that the company had already filed a civil suit, and was now merely filling additional documents to justify its initial position. The judge in the case added the documents filed by Sandheights to the case file, even though they were not translated into Russian and not been notarized properly.

A Russian court has imposed a ban on the sale of YUKOS assets as part of bankruptcy proceedings initiated against the company by a consortium of Western banks. YUKOS is now required to obtain permission from its court-appointed external manager, Eduard Rebgun, before selling any assets valued at more than $1.1 million. YUKOS is currently attempting to sell its 53.7% stake in Lithuania’s Mazeikiu Nafta refinery, which carries an estimated worth of around $1 million.

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April 2006

April 1: A Moscow court said Wednesday it would pronounce the verdict on S.Bakhmina, an employee of embattled oil company YUKOS charged with embezzlement and tax evasion on April 19. Read more »

April 3: Moscow court postponed hearings in a new murder trial for Alexei Pichugin, the former head of YUKOS’ security service. The hearings will resume on April 27, 2006. Pichugin has already been found guilty of the murder of one Russian couple and the attempted murder of a former YUKOS employee. However, new charges were brought against him in July 2005 when the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office accused him of the murders of a businesswoman and the mayor of Nefteyugansk.

Moscow’s Simonov regional court continued its hearing in the criminal case against Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina. Read more »

April 4:Today in Moscow’s Simonov court, Svetlana Bakhmina’s lawyers continued to speak on behalf of their client. Lawyer Alexander Gofstein pointed at what he called the unjustifiable cruelty of her suggested punishment. He considered a 9-year sentence more fitting a murderess than a woman accused of 8-year-old economic crimes.

April 6: Aleksanyan, YUKOS’ most senior executive in Russia, was seized by Russian police Thursday and is being held on charges of embezzlement and money laundering. Police seized Aleksanyan from his home and refused to give specifics surrounding the arrest. On Friday, one day after Aleksanyan was seized from his apartment, a Moscow court sanctioned his arrest.

April 7: Aleksanyan's lawyer, Gevorg Davgyan, said the Prosecutor General's Office had formally accused his client of stealing 8 billion rubles ($290.3 million) in property and 3.6 billion rubles ($130.6 million) in shares belonging to companies tied to Eastern Oil Company, or VNK. But Davgyan did say that Aleksanyan is accused of having worked with an "organized crime group," meaning that the charges are more serious than would have been the case had he been accused of acting otherwise. Protesting against his arrest Aleksanyan began a hunger-strike.

Eduard Rebgun, the court-appointed bankruptcy supervisor of YUKOS, said he will seek the removal of YUKOS CEO Steven Theede if Rebgun's request for a list of YUKOS' creditors goes unanswered by April 15. Regbun is asking for a list because at the first creditors' meeting June 27, officially-recognized creditors will be able to accept or reject a plan YUKOS proposes to cover its debts.

April 10: A decision on the legality of a bankruptcy case initiated against YUKOS by a consortium of creditor banks will be delivered on April 18, according to a spokesman for the Moscow Arbitration Court. The court said an appeal challenging the legality of the bankruptcy proceedings had been filed by YUKOS.

April 11: YUKOS Executive Vice-President Vasily Aleksanyan has been placed in a punishment cell for ten days for refusal to undergo medical check-up, his lawyer announced. Aleksanyan’s lawyer also informed the public that his client is continuing his hunger strike, which he declared on April 7, in solitary confinement.

April 12: The Moscow City Court has upheld a 14-year sentence against Alexei Kurtsin, a former manager of embattled oil giant YUKOS, convicted of money laundering. The court reduced prison sentences for three other defendants in the YUKOS-Moskva case. Terms for Sergei Baldykov and Nikolai Yumin were reduced from six to four years, and Dmitry Shlensky's sentence was cut from eleven to five years.

Open Russia, an NGO founded by jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has said it will appeal a Moscow City Court decision to uphold an order to freeze its bank accounts. The Moscow City Court has rejected an appeal by the organization against a March 16 Basmanny Court injunction, to freeze accounts, including $5.5 million in the National Trust Bank, following a request from the Prosecutor General's Office. Investigators claim that the funds are from illegal sources and belong to suspects in criminal cases related to Khodorkovsky – the former Chairman of embattled oil company YUKOS – and his business partner and former Group Menatep director, Platon Lebedev.

April 13: YUKOS filed Thursday for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. The company filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The U.S. bankruptcy filing was made by Eduard Rebgun, YUKOS's court-appointed receiver in the oil company's Russian bankruptcy case to block the potential sale of YUKOS's stake in the Mazeikiu Nafta oil refinery to the government of Lithuania.

On April 26 the Moscow City Court will consider the complaint by the lawyer for Vasily Alexanyan against his arrest.

April 14: A US court has imposed a temporary ban on the sale of foreign assets of Russia's oil firm YUKOS until April 21, as requested by YUKOS' interim receiver in a bid to block the sale of Lithuanian oil concern Mazeikiu Nafta, Russia's business daily Kommersant reported Monday. The federal bankruptcy court in New York on April 13 upheld YUKOS external manager Eduard Rebgun's petition to impose a temporary ban on the sale of YUKOS' assets. (Source: RIA Novosti)

April 18: Moscow Arbitration Court has adjourned a claim worth roughly $900 million filed against embattled oil company Yukos by its former production arm Yugaskneftegaz, a court source said Tuesday. On April 13, Moscow Arbitration Court included Yuganskneftegaz in the list of Yukos creditors, ruling that it should be considered as a third-tier creditor. Yugansneftegaz says Yukos owes it 26 million rubles (about $944,000) for oil deliveries in the first quarter of 2004. (Source: RIA Novosti)

April 19: Svetlana Bakhmina, ex-YUKOS lawyer and mother of two young boys, was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison for tax evasion and embezzlement. "We will protest the sentence, of course," said Bakhmina's attorney, Olga Kozyreva. In reading the sentence, the chief judge said Bakhmina was to be sent to a maximum-security prison. Prosecutor Nikolai Vlasov, who represented the Prosecutor General's Office in the case, said later, however, that the judge should have said Bakhmina would be sent to a standard prison."I think a technical mistake took place and the court in fact sentenced her to standard imprisonment. The judge must have made a slip of the tongue," Vlasov said.

Moscow City Court rejected Wednesday an appeal by Mikhail Khodorkovsky-founded NGO Open Russia against a district court's decision to freeze its accounts, a spokesperson for the NGO said. (Source: RIA Novosti)

April 20: Moscow's arbitration court of appeal turned down Thursday appeals filed by lawyers acting for embattled oil company Yukos. The court confirmed state-owned oil company Rosneft's right to claim $482 million in debts from the former oil giant during its ongoing bankruptcy case. (Source: RIA Novosti)

April 24: Moscow City Court Monday delayed appeal hearings against the arrest of the executive vice president of embattled oil company Yukos till April 26. The court session was postponed after Vasily Aleksanyan, who faces charges of embezzlement and money laundering, requested he be allowed to attend the hearings in person. (Source: RIA Novosti)

April 27: Defense lawyers for Svetlana Bakhmina, the former deputy head of YUKOS Moscow’s legal department, appealed a Moscow district court ruling sentencing their client to seven years in jail for embezzlement and tax evasion.

Hearings in the second case against former YUKOS security official Alexei Pichugin began on Thursday. Pichugin, who is already serving a 20-year prison sentence for allegedly organizing a double murder, is facing a new trial on two additional murder charges. However, hearings have been rescheduled for May 16 because one of the lawyers requested more time to read the materials of the case.

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May 2006

May 16: Alexei Pichugin, the former security head of security at embattled oil company Yukos, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to new charges of murder and attempted murder.Read more »

May 26: Yukos has received permission from a US court to sell its stake in the Mazeikiu Nafta group to Polish company PKN Orlen. As reported earlier, Yukos had applied to the New York court for a second time with a request for a lifting of the ban on any sale of its shares in the Lithuanian company. Yukos argued that its bankruptcy administrator Eduard Rebgun was blocking the proposed sale. US bankruptcy judge Robert Drain ruled that the risk of missing such a lucrative deal outweighed any fears voiced by Rebgun.

Polish company PKN Orlen signed an agreement with Yukos International, a subsidiary of Yukos Moscow, for the purchase and sale of 53.7% of Mazeikiu Nafta (MN) for $1.492 billion. The republic is now ready to sell the Poles around 30% of MN shares.(Interfax)

May 29: The Prosecutor's office of the Samara region on Monday charged Pavel Anisimov, the head of the 100%-owned Yukos subsidiary Samaraneftegas, with illegal entrepreneurship, according to a source close to the Prosecutor. On May 19 the Samara regional court sentenced him to two and a half years of imprisonment in a minimum-security colony. Samaraneftegas’s chief accountant Elena Marochkina was also given a one-and-a-half-year sentence in a tax evasion case.

May 31: The Moscow City court has upheld the Basmanny court’s decision to keep Yukos executive vice-president Vasily Alexanyan in custody. He’s accused of theft of property and money laundering. Thus the Moscow City court rejected his lawyers’ appeal, calling for the overturning of the ruling on their client’s arrest and his release from prison. Elena Livova, one of his lawyers, told Interfax that wyer Elena Livova stated to ‘Interfax’ the defense was determined to file a further appeal against the Yukos vice-president’s arrest with the Moscow City court’s presidium. (Interfax)

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June 2006

June 2: Moscow’s Basmanny court has agreed to continue until September 2 the imprisonment on remand of Yukos executive vice-president Vasily Alexanyan. Alexanyan is accused of peculation of property and money-laundering. The court agreed that Alexanyan, if released, might attempt both to flee from the jurisdiction of the court and to influence witnesses during the course of the investigation.

June 7: Eduard Rebgun is readying his report, and after June 9 Yukos’ creditors will be able to get to grips with it. Read more »

Viktor Gerashchenko, chairman of the board of Yukos, thinks that preparations are being made to take over the company. ‘The recent resignation of two Yukos managers following a visit to their respective divisions convinces me that a takeover is on its way’, said Gerashchenko on Wednesday in St. Petersburg. He believes that the plan suggested by Yukos managers for its return to financial viability is a realistic one. (Interfax)

The Moscow City court upholds the confiscation of Vasily Alexanyan’s property. The Moscow City court refused to accept Alexanyan’s defence’s team’s appeal for an overruling of the Basmanny court’s decision. The Basmanny court had also ordered the confiscation of real estate owned by Alexanyan. This too had been challenged by the defence in the Moscow City court. The date for the hearing of the lawyers’ appeal on this issue hasn’t been set yet, however. (Interfax)

June 9:Moscow’s Basmanny court is once more stepping into the Yukos case. ‘The cases against Antonio Valdes-Garcia (ex-head of Fargoil), Vladimir Malakhovsky (ex-CEO of Ratibor) and Vladimir Pereverzin (ex-deputy director of Yukos’s foreign-debt planning department) will be heard in camera’, the court has told Interfax. The Russian Prosecutor-General’s office accuses Malakhovsky, Pereverzin and Valdes-Garcia of grand theft carried out by an organized group, among them a number of senior Yukos people, and of the laundering of the money stolen. According to the investigation, the amount involved was $13 billion, of which $8.5 billion was laundered.

June 13: Vasily Alexanyan’s defense has challenged the extension of his custody on remand. Lawyers for the Yukos executive vice-president, accused of peculation and money-laundering, have filed a complaint in the Moscow City court against the prolongation of his pre-trial detention and have asked for his release. The Basmanny court extended Alexanyan’s continued imprisonment on remand until September 2 in accordance with a request from the Prosecutor General’s office. The court agreed with its argument that Alexanyan could flee the court’s jurisdiction and influence both witnesses and the course of the investigation.(Interfax)

June 14:Moscow's Arbitration Court has added the Federal Tax Service's major taxpayers inspectorate to the list of creditors of embattled oil company Yukos. The inspectorate's claims against the oil company stand at 353.8 billion rubles ($13 billion). The next hearings in the Yukos bankruptcy case are scheduled for June 27.(RIA Novosti)

Rosneft is interested in getting money out of the Yukos bankruptcy case, said Rosneft president Sergei Bogdanchikov in an interview with Kommersant carried on Wednesday. ‘We’re interested in getting our money back - though under the circumstances we’d be happy to take it in the form of assets - plants, filling stations, oilfields and so on. Though I should stress that this is not the best possible result for us, since there are better-quality assets than Yukos has in both production and refining’. (Interfax)

June 21: Horwath ICLC, a Russian company and a member of the international audit and consulting group Horwath International, said that its findings indicated that the company's financial statements did not give an adequate picture of its financial situation as of December 31, 2005 and the results of its financial activities in the period from January 1 to December 31, 2005 and could not be recognized as corresponding to Russian requirements for financial statements. The auditor said the value of Yukos' net assets reported as of December 31, 2005 and December 31, 2005 was below the minimum required for charter capitals, which could serve as grounds for liquidating the company. (RIA Novosti)

At a shareholders' meeting on Wednesday, Viktor Gerashchenko, the chairman of the board and one-time Central Bank of Russia chief, said the crippled concern could become a subsidiary of oil company Rosneft and was considering selling a 20% stake in what was once Sibneft to energy giant Gazprom. "The most sensible option would be if Rosneft bought Yukos and Yukos became a Rosneft subsidiary," he told journalists during a break in proceedings at the meeting.

June 23:Yukos, the troubled Russian oil company, has written to the Financial Services Authority, the UK markets watchdog, asking it to thwart a $10bn initial public offering of shares by Rosneft, the state oil group, alleging it would amount to the sale of stolen property.Read more »

June 29: ‘The Prosecutor-General’s office has reduced the charges against Vasily Alexanyan from article 174.1 of the Russian Penal Code (laundering money or other property acquired by an individual as a result of a crime committed by him) to article 174 (laundering money or other property acquired illegally by other persons)’, Alexanyan’s lawyer, Gevorg Dangyan, has told Interfax.

June 30: ‘Gazprom has an interest in acquiring [Yukos-owned] Tomskneft’, Alexandr Ryazanov, president of Gazprom neft and deputy-chairman of the board of Gazprom, has told reporters. His fellow deputy-chairman of Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, added, ‘I worked in ‘Tomskneft’ and I’m all for the acquisition’. Tomskneft VHK is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yukos. As of February 1, the company’s holdings included 2,591,000 wells and 24 licenses for oil and gas extraction at fields in the Tomsk region and the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district. (Interfax)

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July 2006

July 5:The public organization Open Russia, set up by the ex-head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, announced on Wednesday that its website was shutting down, since the staff could no longer support it. ‘We have decided to switch off the organization’s official website on July 10, 2006’, the statement said. Open Russia has faced severe financial problems since March 17, 2006, when its accounts were frozen. Yet, as it points out, ‘despite the closure of programmes and of financial and operational activities, the organization continues to exist and is currently overseeing legal proceedings in five separate lawsuits and appeals against illegal decisions and actions on the part of law-enforcement and judicial bodies’. (Interfax)

July 6: Defense Lawyers Again Appeal Arrest of YUKOS Executive Vice-President Aleksanyan: Defense lawyers for YUKOS executive vice-president Vasily Aleksanyan today appealed their clients arrest to the presidium of the Moscow City Court. “We ask that [the court] recognize the arrest of Vasily Aleksanyan to be illegal and unreasonable, and we are appealing for his immediate release,” announced defense lawyer Gevorg Dangjan. The defense is also requesting that the court overturn the decision of Moscow’s Basmanny Court, which initially sanctioned Aleksanyan’s arrest, and the decision of the cassation board of the Moscow City Court, which ruled to detain Aleksanyan in jail. (Interfax)

July 10: The Open Russia web-site closes down.Read more »

July 11:According to its press-service, the Moscow-district Federal Arbitration Court is now set for hearings in Yukos’s appeal against the decisions to appoint an external administrator, to replace the claimant in the bankruptcy case with Rosneft, and to ban any acquisition or sale of company property above a net asset value of 30 million rubles without the consent of the administrator. In April, the ninth Arbitration Court upheld the March 28 decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court on the introduction to Yukos of external oversight and the replacement of the previous appellant in the Yukos bankruptcy case (foreign banks) by OAO Rosneft. (Interfax)

The American law firm Covington & Burling LLP, which has already filed a lawsuit in the US against the Russian government and state-controlled oil and gas companies on behalf of American minority-shareholders in Yukos, has started legal action in Spain on behalf of Spanish nationals who have allegedly sustained losses as a consequence of the Yukos case, a statement issued by the firm says. Read more »

July 14: A Dutch court froze $9 Million of assets belonging to Rosneft after an appeal by a group of YUKOS investors who are suing the Russian Federation. According to Tom Johnson, a lawyer representing the former YUKOS investors, the Dutch court's decision prevents Rosneft from selling some of its stake in West Kamchatka Holding BV, a Netherlands-registered company. Johnson also said the court's decision might encourage other YUKOS investors to take similar action. (Interfax) Read more »

In a last minute effort to block Rosneft’s listing on the London Stock Exchange, YUKOS filed for an injunction against the IPO. “An application . . . has been made in the UK courts seeking an interim injunction restraining the FSA . . . and restraining the exchange from admitting Rosneft [shares] to trade,” a statement from the London Stock Exchange said. “The application seeks ultimately to make those interim restraints permanent.” Although the London Stock Exchange also said trading in Rosneft shares would begin Friday despite the filing, it the British courts approve YUKOS’ application, deals finalized before the first settlement on July 19 will be void. YUKOS announced a British judge may decide on Friday whether to proceed with a judicial review. (Interfax)

July 15:Former YUKOS Vice President Vasily Aleksanyan is facing a new charge and is now accused of violating Article 198 of the Russian Criminal Code (tax evasion by an individual). Now Aleksanyan is facing charges under three articles of the criminal code, as he was previously accused of embezzlement and money laundering. Aleksanyan was questioned Friday after his indictment was amended. According to defense attorney Gevorg Dangyan: “He [Aleksanyan] considers the indictment completely far-fetched and unwarranted.” He added that none of the charges against his client have any grounds or evidence.

July 17: Rosneft, one of the main suppliers of oil to Yukos’s refineries, may be interested in acquiring them, said president of Rosneft Sergei Bogdanchikov at a briefing in Strelna (near St. Petersburg) on Sunday. He said that ‘the money Rosneft is likely to be receiving as Yukos’s creditor - and we expect to get it - will be passed on downstream’. According to Bogdanchikov, Yukos’s court-confirmed debt to Rosneft amounts to $3.2 billion and may in the end total up to $4.5 billion; and he said that Rosneft was considering three ways of using it to increase its stake in refineries. ‘We might buy Yukos’s plants. But we’re also looking at refineries in Bashkiria, which are much better than Yukos’s and - though we’re not currently in discussion with the owners - are definitely appealing. There’s also’, he said, ‘idle capacity at a variety of plants belong to different companies. So buying a share in them and sending them our oil is a possibility’. (Interfax)

July 19:Moscow city court ruled Wednesday that the executive vice president of embattled oil company Yukos should remain in custody. (RIA Novosti)

Trading of Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft's shares starts Wednesday in London after the High Court dismissed a legal challenge mounted by Yukos. (RIA Novosti)

July 20: Steven Theede, the chief executive of embattled oil company Yukos, filed his resignation Thursday. Theede was supposed to be present a plan for the company's financial restructuring via video link-up at a conference with the company's board, but refused to join a process that he said he would be attended by people intent on "destroying" what was left of Yukos. Theede said he had been told there was no chance to restructure the company and liquidation was the only option. But Theede suggested Yukos would apply to the European Court of Human Rights, where it would seek to claim damages over the seizure and sale at auction of core production unit Yuganskneftegaz to pay off tax arrears. (RIA Novosti)

Gazprom has offered in a letter to buy a 20% stake in Gazprom Neft, formerly known as Sibneft, from embattled crude producer Yukos, a source said Wednesday. He said Russian energy giant Gazprom had sent the letter Tuesday after examining a plan for Yukos' financial rehabilitation, which includes the company's intention to sell the stake in Gazprom Neft. The source said Gazprom proposed discussing a reduction in the price of the stake as set out in Yukos' financial rehabilitation plan. "Gazprom will offer to discuss a mutually acceptable price at negotiations," he added. (RIA Novosti)

July 24: Yukos managers have recently placed a value on the company of $37.788 billion, 2.3 times more than the one arrived at by temporary administrator Eduard Rebgun ($16.654 billion). Production assets alone, according to the management, come to $17.719 billion (Samaraneftegas, $7.245 billion; Tomskneft, $7.284 billion; Arcticgas, $1.19 billion; Urengoil, $1.408 billion; other companies, a total of $591 million). Refining facilities amount to $3.866 billion - $1.492 billion of it in publicly-sold stock of Mazeikiu Nafta, and $2.374 billion in a portfolio of other enterprises. Transport assets are valued at $393 million; sales assets at $1.008 billion; and power assets at $251 million. The company’s 20% stake in Gazprom neft, according to the management, is worth $4.077 billion (based on a PTC price per share of $4.3 on July 20, 2006 at PTC), and Yuganskneftegas preference-shares are worth $10.42 billion. Quite apart from this, based on the recent IPO valuation of Rosneft at $79.8 billion, the management report estimates that Yuganskneftegas, which represents 70% of Rosneft’s assets, is worth $55.9 billion, and that Yukos’s remaining 23.2% share in Yuganskneftegas is therefore worth $12.969 billion, and that its share in Yuganskneftegas with consolidation into Rosneft comes to another $7.455 billion. "Meanwhile the company's debts, according to the management, total $29.489 billion ($11.5 billion to the tax authorities; $2.45 billion to Yuganskneftegas/Rosneft; $485 million - representing the bank debt bought by Rosneft; and $13.7 million to Moravel), while, according to Rebgun they come to $18.505 billion, $16.983 billion of them confirmed by the courts." (Interfax)

July 25: Yukos took another step toward the brink Tuesday after a court-appointed external manager recommended that liquidation procedures be started. Eduard Rebgun said the company's proceeds after the sale of assets and the payment of back-taxes would not even cover the crude producer's court-recognized debts. "The company's financial restructuring is impossible and, therefore, we recommend the company to initiate liquidation procedures," Rebgun said. A meeting of creditors of Yukos also voted Tuesday to recognize the company bankrupt and start liquidation procedures. (RIA Novosti)

Yukos’s chief shareholder, Group Menatep Ltd. (GML), is determined to continue its court battle with the Russian Federation to achieve compensation for Yukos shareholders, GML’s chief financial officer Tim Osborne told the Petroleum Information Agency on Tuesday. ‘After today’s decision by the creditors, the only thing left for us is to continue litigation against Russia in courts across the world’, he said. He also said that the next hearing of the case under the Energy Charter would be held in June next year, before which time Menatep was planning a series of other legal proceedings - though Mr. Osborne didn’t elaborate on what these were.

Moscow City court will start hearing arguments in a new murder case involving Yukos’s ex-head of security Alexei Pichugin. As expected, the prosecutor has asked the court to sentence Pichugin and five fellow-defendants to prison. According to Pichugin’s lawyer Ksenia Kostromina, Pichugin told the court, ‘I know I’m not guilty of any of the crimes I’m accused of. I have not committed any crime’.

July 27: ‘I’ve been told that an organization has appeared which is prepared to buy Yukos’s debts and take over the company’, Yukos board chairman Viktor Gerashchenko has told Ekho Moskvy radio. ‘But certain conditions have to be created for it so that Yukos’s owners agree - otherwise they won’t receive anything - and so that the authorities understand that this is the best way out . . . one that will save their face’, he said. ‘It’s too early to say finita la commedia’, he added, since an investor with money has appeared saying he’s ready to buy the company’s semi-fictitious tax debts. That’s why, he elaborated, ‘we continue to say [to the Russian authorities - Petroleum Information Agency]: Decide on the issue in the proper way, in the best interests of the country’ and of the oil business in general, factoring in both ‘social responsibility and responsibility to maintain the attractiveness of the investment climate’.

The Moscow City Court will give a verdict in a murder trial involving a former head of security at oil company Yukos, Alexei Pichugin, on August 17, a lawyer said Thursday. The Prosecutor General's Office charged Pichugin in July 2005 with organizing two murders and two attempted murders. Speaking in court, Pichugin asked the court to fully examine the case and to pass a just sentence. He also said he did not know any of the other accused people in the dock. Defense lawyer Georgy Kaganer said Pichugin had had no motive for committing the crimes he was charged with.

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August 2006

August 1: Moscow’s Arbitration Court pronounced Yukos bankrupt. The Court placed the company in receivership for a period of one year, and named as receiver Eduard Rebgun, the pro-tem administrator, on a monthly salary of 1.8 million rubles. The Court’s decision is open to challenge for a period of one month. In the meantime it ruled that the operations of the debtor’s executive bodies should be forthwith suspended, and ordered its management to hand over the accounts and the company stamp to the receiver within three days. The court dismissed a Yukos motion to continue the case until August 7. Yukos lawyer Drew Holiner said the company was determined to challenge the Court’s decision to declare it bankrupt and place it in receivership. (Interfax)

Group Menatep, Yukos’s chief shareholder, has promised to challenge the court’s decision in Yukos’s bankruptcy proceedings in The Hague, London and Washington. In a Group Menatep press-release, chief financial officer Tim Osbourne is quoted as saying: ‘The attack on Yukos that came to a head in the bankruptcy hearing was politically-motivated. The Russian government set out to ruin Yukos from the very beginning’.

August 8: The Prosecutor General’s office has opened a fresh investigation in the Yukos bankruptcy case. Read more »

August 9: Moscow City Court postpones Svetlana Bakhmina’s appeal against her sentence. At the Court’s request, the hearing was continued until August 24, on the grounds that it needed additional time to familiarize itself with the documents in the case. Lawyers for Ms. Bakhmina have called for the verdict to be found illegal, for the sentence to be set aside and for all charges to be dropped. Moscow’s Simonovsky Court on April 19 found Ms. Bakhmina guilty of tax evasion and of embezzling an estimated eight billion rubles from Tomskneft, and sentenced her to seven years’ imprisonment in a minimum-security colony.

A Yukos spokesperson has informed that representatives from the Prosecutor-General’s office seized documents from Yukos FBTs on August 8. Read more »

August 10: Moscow's Arbitration Court will hear August 23 the legitimacy of a creditors' decision to recognize Yukos Oil Company bankrupt and start liquidation proceedings, a court official said Thursday.

August 11: The Ninth Moscow Arbitration Appellate Court has reduced the Federal Tax Service's claims against Yukos from $13.2 bln to $11.6 bln. The Appeal Court partially upheld a Yukos motion against the Federal Tax Service’s demand for payment of $4 bln in back taxes for 2004.

August 17: The Moscow City Court has sentenced Alexei Pichugin, former security chief of the now bankrupt oil company Yukos, to 24 years in prison for two murders and organizing a murder attempt. "The defendant's guilt has been substantiated by criminal case materials and witness testimony," the court said in the verdict, adding that it had been mitigated because Pichugin had underage children. The prosecution had requested a life sentence. The Prosecutor General's Office said it was pleased with the verdict.(RIA Novosti)

Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal case against former Yukos President Steven Theede and other senior managers of the bankrupt oil company. Theede, financial director Bruce Misamore, managing advisor David Godfrey, and director of Group Menatep Tim Osborne are suspected of embezzlement and money laundering. According to investigations, the Yukos top managers conspired to seize the company's foreign assets, and created a special fund to transfer shares in foreign companies controlled by a Yukos subsidiary in the Netherlands. They used a similar scheme to acquire shares in more than 20 foreign subsidiaries and transfer them to a company owned by David Godfrey, prosecutors said. "As a result, the above-mentioned individuals illegally appropriated assets worth more than $10 billion, in cash, Eurobonds, shares, portfolio investments, in various foreign funds and deposits in trust funds and banks," the Prosecutor General's office said in a statement.(RIA Novosti)

August 23: Moscow City Court reduced by half a year the sentence imposed on Svetlana Bakhmina, deputy-head of Yukos’s legal department. Moscow’s Simonovsky Court had earlier given her seven years in prison. The court thus dismissed her lawyers’ appeal for a not-guilty verdict. But it did remove from the verdict and close the case on a charge under article 198 (tax evasion) on statute-of-limitations grounds. It continued, however, to find Svetlana Bakhmina guilty under article 160, part 3 of the Russian Penal Code (embezzlement). Read more »

Moscow’s Arbitration Court turned down an appeal from Yukos against its creditors’ decision to declare the company bankrupt. Yukos had asked the Court to pronounce the decision of the creditors’ meeting illegal during the course of a suit brought by the creditors to uphold the bankruptcy decision and to implement receivership. According to a statement from Anton Ustinov, representing the board of creditors, Yukos believes that the meeting was misled by inaccurate data about the value of the company’s assets. ‘But no proof of this was offered by the debtor’, he said ‘All we saw were unsupported statements which failed to conform in any way to Russian law’.

Yukos representative in Lithuania Tomas Gizas believes that Russians seek to disrupt the sale of Mazeikiu Nafta at any cost and take over the control.Read more »

August 24: Moscow's Basmanny Court has extended the custody of a vice-president of the bankrupt oil company Yukos Vasily Alexanyan until December 2. Vasily Alexanyan was arrested April 7 and accused of asset theft and money laundering, charges which he denies. But defense lawyer Gevorg Dangyan said he did not agree with the ruling and would contest it in the Moscow City Court. "The defendant's health has sharply deteriorated, he is losing his eyesight and cannot get proper medical assistance in pretrial detention," he said. (RIA Novosti)

August 29: The Moscow Arbitration Court of Appeals will consider September 19 a motion by the Yukos Oil Company against a ruling on its bankruptcy, the court's press service said.(RIA Novosti)

Moscow’s Arbitration Court has postponed consideration of a suit filed by Yukos shareholder V. Barmin challenging the legality of the Yukos board’s appointment of Steven Theede as president of the company. The case has been continued pending further submission of documents.

August 31: The Prosecutor General's Office has contested a court decision on the former security chief Yukos, convicted for two murders and organizing a murder. ‘It has been made public today that the Prosecutor General’s office filed a cassation appeal to the Moscow city court presidium against the verdict to my client since it considers the sentence too light’, told Thursday A. Pichugin’s lawyer Ksenia Kostromina. (Source: RIA Novosti)

Irina Yasina leaves ‘Open Russia’. The board of the Open Russia foundation has accepted the resignation of Irina Yasina as deputy chairwoman and has elected independent State Duma deputy Anatoly Ermolin to take her place. Read more »

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September 2006

September 4: According to The Times newspaper, Yukos shareholders have filed suit against Russia for an estimated $50 billion in compensation for losses inflicted on them as a result of the breaking-up of the oil company. Its chief shareholder GML, formerly known as Group Menatep Ltd., has filed suit under the Energy Charter before the UN Commission on International Trade Law in The Hague. GML head Tim Osborne says the increase in the compensation applied for has to do with a change in the estimated value of Yukos due to higher oil prices. According to him, the company has offered to hold negotiations with the Russian side, but it has received no reply to its offer.

September 6: Moscow City Court is set to resume hearings on an appeal by Alexanyan’s lawyers against the confiscation of his country house and holiday cottage. He currently stands accused of embezzlement of property (under article 160 of the Russian Penal Code), false register of property, and embezzlement and laundering of both money and property obtained dishonestly by others. On July 14, the Prosecutor-General’s office brought a further charge, under article 198, of individual tax evasion. Alexanyan is accused of embezzling $460 million from Tomskneft, a Yukos production arm, as well as funds from other oil companies, and of laundering a further $460.8 million via a personal Swiss-bank account.

September 7:The Prosecutor General's Office decided Thursday to prolong until December 2 an investigation into the case of an executive vice-president of the embattled oil company Yukos, a lawyer for the accused said. Gevorg Dangyan said the Basmanny Court of Moscow also ruled earlier that his defendant, Vasily Aleksanyan, be remanded until December 2. Prosecutors said earlier they wanted Aleksanyan to be remanded into custody because they feared he could flee the country and that he had attempted to do so already. They also said he could try to intimidate witnesses, destroy documents or hinder the investigation were he to be released.

September 19:Svetlana Bakhmina, the Yukos-Moskva lawyer sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison, has filed a request to the court asking for postponement of sentence until her younger child turns 14. ‘The request has been sent from the detention-facility to Moscow’s Simonovsky Court by Bakhmina herself’, Bakhmina’s lawyer Olga Kozyreva told the Interfax news agency. She explained that Bakhmina’s younger child is now 5, the older one 9; and that according to the law a request for postponement is considered at an ordinary hearing, with the decision later subject to possible appeal in a superior court. According to Ms. Kozyreva, the date of the hearing on the request has not yet been set. (Interfax)

Moscow City Court judge Vladimir Usov has sentenced Alexei Pichugin, former security-chief of the now bankrupt oil company Yukos, to 24 years in a high-security prison for two murders and the organization of a further attempted murder. .Read more »

A statement from the Prosecutor General’s office has revealed that a criminal case has been filed under article 160, part 4 of the Russian Penal Code (embezzlement) and article 171, part 1 (the laundering of money or other property dishonestly obtained) against a number of unspecified persons. ‘According to an investigation, between January and July in Moscow and the city of Strezhevoy in the Tomsk region, people involved in the management of Tomskneft, in cooperation with the management of Yurprofresurs (Moscow) and the Intellect group of companies (Moscow), embezzled funds from Tomskneft amounting by our estimation to more than 6.56 billion rubles’.

September 29:According to a statement made by Eduard Rebgun, Yukos’s court-appointed receiver, he will on Friday start receiving applications in an open contest for companies seeking the right to be appointed evaluator of Yukos’s property. The results of the contest will be announced on October 13, 2006. The documentation necessary will be presented within one working day after the receipt of a written request from any interested organization. (Interfax)

Seven investment funds have joined the claims of Yukos’s Spanish shareholders.Read more »

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October 2006

October 2: The Simonovsky Court rejected a request from Svetlana Bakhmina's defense lawyers, who asked that the former deputy head of the legal department at the embattled oil company's Yukos Moskva unit be allowed to serve her six-and-a-half-year prison term after her younger child, now aged five, turns 14. Lawyer Olga Kozyreva said Bakhmina's elder child was 10, and that a Moscow City Court judge has indicated that asking to delay the sentence would be perfectly valid in her case. (RIA Novosti)

October 13:At the end of summer 2006, Moscow City Court completed the trial of the ex-head of Yukos’s internal economic-security department, Alexei Pichugin. He was sentenced to 24 years’ imprisonment in a high-security colony. Journalist Vera Vasilieva has put together a compendium of her court reports on the Pichugin trial; and in an interview with Radio Svoboda she goes into the details.Read more »

October 17:A Cyprus regional court has rejected a request from the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office for the extradition of Ivan Kolesnikov, a lawyer from the ALM Feldmans law-firm. Kolesnikov is accused of assisting Yukos vice-president Alexander Temerko in the ‘gratuitous acquisition’ of 19.7% of shares in Eniseyneftegas. Yesterday the Russian Prosecutor-General, Yuri Chaika, left for Cyprus to review the case and obtain documents in other Yukos cases.

October 19:A court in Tuscany, Italy has refused to hand over to Russia Alexei Golubovich, formerly one of Yukos’s top managers. Golubovich was accused in absentia of the same crimes which served as the basis for Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment. Read more »

October 20:Law-enforcement officers have carried out a search at the country house of Yukos’s ex-head of security, Alexei Pichugin, now serving 24 years in prison for suborning murder, according to a statement from his lawyer Ksenia Kostromina. ‘On Wednesday, Pichugin’s country house in Golitsyno was searched without any prior notice given to his relatives, wife or lawyers’, she said. ‘The search was carried out by law-enforcement officers in the absence of his wife. As a result of this operation a pistol-lighter, proficiency medals awarded to him during his service and a number of documents were taken away’.(Interfax, 20.10.2006)

October 25:A former Yukos executive convicted on embezzlement and tax evasion charges has been sent to serve her six-and-a-half-year sentence in a women's penal colony in the Central Russian republic of Mordovia, a lawyer for the convicted executive said Wednesday. One of Bakhmina's lawyers, Olga Kozyreva, said the decision to send her defendant to the penal colony was illegal, because the court's decision had not yet come into force. Another lawyer for Bakhmina, Alexander Gofshtein, said they appealed the decision of the Simonovsky Court to the Moscow City Court, which scheduled hearings on the request for November 8.(RIA Novosti)

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November 2006

November 1:A mayor in Russia's Urals suspected of illegally granting tax privileges to shell companies controlled by bankrupt oil giant Yukos may be tried in court on charges of abuse of office, the Prosecutor General's office said Wednesday. Prosecutors say Nikolai Lubenets, the mayor of Tryokhgorny in the Chelyabinsk Region, provided tax breaks for front companies registered in his district as Yukos subsidiaries, enabling several hundred million dollars in tax payments to be diverted from the regional and federal treasuries. The Prosecutor's General Office, which sent the case against Lubenets to the Chelyabinsk Region court Wednesday, said in a Web posting: "As mayor, Lubenets abused his powers in 1999-2000, when he illegally granted additional tax privileges to Yukos-controlled front companies. The municipality's budget was deprived of more than 10 billion rubles [about $373 million] in tax revenue." The companies Nortex, Kverkus, Greis, Muskron and Virtus are named among the entities registered in Truyokhgorny as subsidiaries of Yukos, Russia's former No.1 oil producer. (RIA Novosti)

November 3:A Moscow court on Friday rejected a claim from Russia's Federal Property Management Agency seeking to regain state control of a 20% stake in a fertilizer company held by bankrupt oil company Yukos.(RIA Novosti)

November 8:Moscow’s Lefortovo Court has sentenced Alexander Alexandrov, the owner of the Alexandrov Rally racing-team, to 7 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 600,000 rubles for his part in the embezzlement from Yukos by former executives of Yukos-Moskva of an estimated 342 million roubles. According to a statement by the Prosecutor-General, ‘A. Alexandrov has been found guilty of embezzling some 342 million rubles between January and July 2000, along with M. Trushin first vice-president of Yukos-Moskva, A. Kurtsin, head of Yukos-Moskva’s general department, and other members of an organized group’. Mr. Alexandrov has also been found guilty of laundering stolen property. (Interfax)

November 29: Moscow’s Arbitration Court upheld a lawsuit filed by the Russian Federal Security Service for the recovery of 711,531,000 rubles from Yukos-M (a subsidiary of Yukos). According to the Petroleum News Agency, the sum in question was awarded to the plaintiff as compensation for a shortfall in fuel deliveries agreed under a contract with the Federal Frontier Service at the end of 2002. In April and May 2003, according to the plaintiff’s lawyer, a deficiency in diesel fuel was discovered in storage tanks after delivery to a Murmansk troop unit. Yukos-M had based its defence on the expiry of the statute of limitations and on violations committed by the plaintiff while gathering evidence in the case. The court also ordered Yukos-M to pay an estimated 13,615,000 rubles in Federal state taxes, but did not grant a motion from the plaintiff demanding an extra percentage payment from Yukos-M for illegal use of funds. (Interfax, 29.11.2006)

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December 2006

December 4:The Basmanny Court ruled that Vasily Aleksanyan will be remanded in custody until March 2, following a plea from the Prosecutor General's Office. The Prosecutor General's Office accuses Aleksanyan of embezzling $460 million from Yukos production unit Tomskneft and funds from other oil companies, and of laundering another $460.8 million through his personal account in a Swiss bank. Aleksanyan's lawyer Gevorg Dangyan said the defense had insisted on their client's immediate release, saying he had health problems and did not have access to proper medical aid in the pre-trial detention center. (RIA Novosti)

December 7: A representative of the consortium valuing Yukos, Roseco head Evgeny Neiman, has said that the maximum discount to be offered during the liquidation of the company’s assets will be 25-30%. Drafts of valuation reports ‘on twenty-three companies’, he says, are now ready, including estimates of ownership ratios in Rosneft and Gazpromneft, of which Yukos owns 9.44% and 20% respectively. ‘If you talk about overall cost, we will probably cover up to 95%’, the Roseco boss believes. The company is to complete work on the valuation by January 19, 2007. (Interfax, 07.12.2006)

Moscow hasn’t forgotten Svetlana Bakhmina. The Yukos accountant has been in prison for two years now. Around 20 people took part in a picket organized in the New Pushkin Gardens by the For Human Rights organization. They carried a small poster with a reminder that Svetlana Bakhmina’s children have been deprived of their mother for two whole years. The Bakhmina case, according to demonstrators, clearly showed that the punishment handed down to Yukos employees bore no relation to what they actually did, but was all down to an attitude towards the company itself. ‘It’s about vengeance on the part of the authorities’, said one of the participants Nina Falkovskaya. Svetlana Bakhmina is currently serving her sentence in one of the colonies in Mordovia.(Yakov Shirokov, Ekho Moskvy, 07.12.2006)

December 18: Moscow's Arbitration Court has postponed until January 25 the hearing of a lawsuit filed by Yukos against the government for auctioning off its core asset to repay back taxes. Yukos, which was declared bankrupt in August following three years of prosecution, is now seeking to invalidate the deal and wants $14.8 billion in damages. On Monday, the court concluded preliminary hearings. Yukos filed the lawsuit in May 2005, claiming that the production unit was sold in violation of Russian and international law, and that the starting price was deliberately undervalued. The Federal Bailiff Service decided to sell off Yugansk to cover the embattled company's massive $20 billion tax bill on November 18, 2004. (RIA Novosti)

December 25: PricewaterhouseCoopers, an auditor for Yukos in 2002, will fight accusations of involvement in tax evasion schemes in court, the company said Monday. The Federal Tax Service accused PWC of helping the bankrupt oil company evade taxes. (RIA Novosti) Read more »

Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s licence to audit will be revoked if the court finds its report on Yukos’s financial accounts for 2002 knowingly false, a source in the Russian Finance Ministry has told Interfax. ‘Under article 11 of the law on auditing, that’s the penalty’, the source explained, though he refused to elaborate, since there had not yet been any confirmation of the official position on the report. Pricewaterhouse Cooper intends to assert its own position in court. (Interfax, 25.12.2006)

December 26: The presidential administration is in debt to Yukos for a sanatorium. Now that Yukos has gone went into receivership, settlement of arbitration cases has dramatically changed direction. The oil company has started winning in court. Moscow’s Arbitration Court has ordered the recovery of around 80 million rubles from the presidential administration as compensation for the seizure by the state from Yukos subsidiaries of the Rus health resort in Sochi. These funds, however, will merely be added to the bankrupt Yukos’s frozen assets, the chief callers on which are the Federal Tax Service and state-run company Rosneft. (Kommersant, 26.12.2006)

December 27: Moscow's City Court has upheld the refusal to postpone the start of the 6.5-year sentence of a former Yukos executive convicted on embezzlement and tax evasion charges despite her having two minor children to care for, her lawyer said Wednesday. On October 2, the Simonovsky Court rejected a request from Svetlana Bakhmina's defense lawyers, who asked that the former deputy head of the legal department at the embattled oil company's Yukos Moskva unit be allowed to serve her six-and-a-half-year prison term after her younger child, now aged five, turns 14. The judge of the Simonovsky Court said Bakhmina's well-off relatives are capable of taking care of her children. (RIA Novosti)

Platon Lebedev, now serving eight-year sentences in Siberia for fraud and tax evasion since 2005, was taken to a pre-trial detention facility in the regional center of Chita in eastern Siberia, where he was expected to face new money laundering charges in connection with Yukos subsidiaries Fargoil and Ratibor, but no charges followed, Khodorkovsky's lawyer Yury Shmidt told by phone earlier in the day. Lebedev's lawyer said his client refused to give evidence Wednesday and also challenged the team of investigators, as it took part in the first case. "Lebedev has refused to give evidence as a suspect because the investigating team was part of the first Yukos case," Yevgeny Baru said. "Therefore he suggests the investigators cannot be unbiased in a new case." Investigators earlier said the ex-Yukos officials (Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev) had masterminded a scheme to sell crude oil through two trading companies under their control, Fargoil and Ratibor, acting both as fictitious owners and buyers, and laundered money through a charity, established by Khodorkovsky. Prosecutors also said Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had been using Open Russia non-governmental organization as a money laundering operation. (RIA Novosti)

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January 2007

January 9: Vasily Alexanyan’s lawyers have started familiarizing themselves with materials in the criminal case against him. The investigation, in which Vasily Alexanyan is accused of embezzlement, money-laundering and tax-evasion, is now complete, Alexanyan’s lawyer Gevorg Davgyan has said. Earlier Moscow’s Basmanny Court extended Vasily Alexanyan’s remand in custody until March 2. After Alexanyan’s defence has finished familiarizing itself with materials in the case, it will be passed to the Court for consideration of its merits. Vasily Alexanyan stands accused of embezzlement (article 160) and ‘legalization, or laundering of money or of other property illegally acquired by other persons’ (article 174). (Interfax)

January 11: Tax bodies attempt to convince Moscow’s Arbitration Court of Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s greater guilt. Read more »

January 15: Yukos V-P Vasily Alexanyan and his lawyer have got down to familiarizing themselves with materials in his criminal case, the investigation of which was completed by the Prosecutor General’s office a few days ago. It will take a good deal of time. The case materials amount to a hundred volumes - and Mr. Alexanyan has become almost blind. Read more »

January 16: A Moscow district court has resumed hearings in an embezzlement and money laundering case against three former executives of the Yukos oil empire, forced into bankruptcy last year to pay its huge back tax bills. Antonio Valdez-Garcia, former head of the Yukos subsidiary Fargoil, Vladimir Malakhovsky, ex-managing director of the Ratibor unit, and Vladimir Pereverzin, a one-time deputy head of Yukos' foreign debt department, are charged with designing a scheme to divert $13 billion worth of crude oil and launder $8.5 billion of the receipts. All three have pleaded not guilty to the charges. The prosecution is seeking an 11-year prison term for each of the defendants.(RIA Novosti) Read more »

The Basmanny Court continues to lay the ground for new charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. Read more »

Russia’s chief prosecutor, Yuri Chaika, has confirmed that ‘Spanish national Antonio Valdes-Garcia has disappeared. He’s been put on the wanted list. A criminal case is being filed against the police officers who were guarding him’. The chief prosecutor said that ‘he (Garcia) had actively assisted in the work of the investigation - but he’s not a key witness’. Read more »

January 17: The Moscow Arbitration Court said Wednesday a lawsuit by Russian tax authorities against the local branch of UK-based PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the auditor for the now bankrupt oil company Yukos in 2002-2004, will be heard February 14. The court satisfied Wednesday the tax authorities' request to change the litigation claims. Now the service is seeking to invalidate relevant contracts for 2002-2004 and charge $480,000 from PwC. The tax authorities said Yukos failed to correct violations discovered in 2002 in the subsequent two years. "The company continued to illegally transfer money to the Production Development Financial Support Fund in 2003-04. Nor did the company start mentioning its profitless operations with bonds in its financial reports," the tax service said. (RIA Novosti)

Sergei Shimkevich, an ex-executive of Tomskneft and currently a deputy in the Tomsk regional Duma, has been arrested at the request of the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office on suspicion of embezzlement and money-laundering. The Prosecutor General’s office said that a regional court panel had earlier uncovered elements essential to these offences in Sergei Shimkevich’s conduct. ‘Shimkevich, along with others, set up an organized criminal group which carried out a number of fictitious transactions in different company securities’, runs a statement posted on Wednesday on the Prosecutor-General’s office’s web-site. The statement goes on to say: ‘As a result, the criminal group managed to transfer to the account of the Moscow branch of the Trast Bank 5.93 billion rubles illegally taken from Tomskneft and originally earmarked for the payment of taxes, and were thus enabled to dispose of the money as it wished’. The same group, according to the Prosecutor General’s office, organized a paper exchange of Tomskneft bills of no market value for fourteen bills from the Trast Bank totalling around 5.7 billion rubles. ‘In the near future materials concerning Mr. Shmikevich will be forwarded to the Court for consideration of the conditions of his remand’, the Prosecutor General’s office added. (Interfax, 17.01.2007)

January 18: An ex-executive of Tomskneft has been placed under arrest following a hearing in the Basmanny Court. The Prosecutor General’s office has filed charges against ex-Tomskneft executive, Sergei Shimkevich, currently a deputy in the Tomsk regional Duma, accusing him of embezzlement and money-laundering, as was made clear during a hearing in the Basmanny Court sanctioning his arrest. ‘On January 16 at 7 p.m., Shimkevich was detained in the city of Seversk. On January 17, the Prosecutor's office issued a decree tying him to proceedings as a defendant’, said a Basmanny Court judge during the reading of her decision. She said that Mr. Shimkevich had been charged with embezzlement (under article 160 of the Penal Code of the Russian Federation) and money-laundering or legalization of other property (under article 174.1). After the reading of the ruling, Mr. Simkevich’s lawyer, Viktor Danilchenko, confirmed to journalists that his client had indeed been charged. ‘The charges were filed yesterday evening in Moscow’, he said. At the same time he underlined the fact that he’s determined to challenge the Basmanny Court’s decision on the arrest. (Interfax)

January 19: Yukos’s assets may not be enough to pay its debts. Read more »

January 22: The Moscow City Court has ruled to further remand in custody Yukos executive vice-president Vasily Alexanyan, who’s been charged, among other offences, with tax-evasion. The court’s press-office has told Interfax that ‘the court has upheld the decision to extend until March 2 Vasily Alexanyan’s period in custody’. The Moscow City Court has thus refused to satisfy Alexanyan’s appeal for his release.(Interfax, 22.01.2007)

January 23: The defence of former Tomskneft executive Sergei Shimkevich, who’s been charged with embezzlement and money laundering, have filed an appeal against his arrest. Read more »

January 25: Cyprus authorities overruled the decision about arrest of entrepreneur Vladislav Kartashov put on the wanted list by Russia’s Prosecutor General’s office in YUKOS criminal case.Read more »

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February 2007

February 2: Moscow’s Basmanny Court has authorized the arrest in his absence of the former head of Fargoil, Antonio Valdes-Garcia. Valdes-Garcia is accused of embezzling $13 billion via Yukos-controlled companies. Read more »

February 6: The Supreme Court will hear the cassational appeal against Alexey Pichugin's second sentence. (Interfax, 06.02.2007)

February 8: The Kuvshinsky city court (in the Sverdlovsk district) has ruled in the criminal case against Alexander Ivannikov, formerly mayor of the closed political subdivision of Lesnoy City, who was accused of abuse of authority. According to the press-office of the Sverdlovsk district court, the former mayor has been sentenced to five years in prison, to be.served in a minimum-security colony. The court also stripped Ivannikov of the right to hold public office. Mr. Ivannikov was charged with abuse of authority under articles 285 and 286 (malfeasance) of the Penal Code. The investigation alleged that that he had granted illegal tax-exemptions to four companies involving an estimated 17 billion roubles. ‘The sentence will definitely be challenged. We believe it to be illegal, biased and unfair - and we cannot let such lawlessness stand’, said Ivannikov’s lawyer Valery Nagibin. (Interfax, 08.02.2007)

February 14: The Russian Supreme Court has postponed consideration of the case of Alexei Pichugin, the former head of security at Yukos who’s been sentenced to twenty-four years in prison for conspiracy to murder, till February 21. ‘The Court is hearing the case in the court of appeal and has decided to postpone the hearing until February 21’, said the judge in reading the bench’s decision. The postponement had been asked for by the prosecution as well as by representatives of othr parties to the case on the grounds that Alexei Pichugin’s lawyers’ lengthy appeal against the sentence had only recently been received by the Court and the sides hadn’t yet been able to familiarize themselves with it. In their appeal, Pichugin’s lawyers ask for the Moscow City Court’s verdict to be overturned and for the case to be closed. (Interfax, 14.02.2007)

Representatives of Noriilsk Nickel, Gazprom and Itera have shown an interest in the assets of Yukos that are being prepared for sale under bankruptcy procedures. ‘All we’re talking about is some sign of interest’, said Nikolai Lashkevich, the Yukos receiver’s press-secretary. ‘It’s too early to talk about them as full-blown bidders. They’ll only legally become so once they’ve submitted their bids for the right to take part in the auction, have provided all the necessary documents, have put down an advance and so on’. (Interfax, 14.02.2007)

Moscow’s Arbitration Court has postponed the main hearing in the suit brought by the Russian Federal Tax Service seeking to invalidate the 2002-2004 agreements for the provision of auditing services between Yukos and the Russian office of PricewaterhouseCooper. An Interfax correspondent has reported from the courtroom that the case has been postponed because of the failure of commercial arbitrators to appear. The court offered on behalf of both parties to send a telegram to the candidates for mediation, notifying them of the date of a future hearing. At a previous hearing, according to reports, the court had upheld a motion from PwC asking for the suit to be considered with the participation of commercial arbitrators and had obliged the parties to present candidates for approval not later than ten days before the beginning of the hearing. The court had also upheld a motion from the Federal Tax Service asking for claims in the suit to be spelled out. In addition to the earlier suit calling for the 2002 agreement on the provision of auditing services to be invalidated, the court will also be considering the validity of similar agreements for 2003 and 2004. The sum of the potential penalty will be increased from $145,000 to $480,000. (Interfax, 14.02.2007)

February 16:Moscow’s Arbitration Court dismissed Yukos’s suit seeking to have the auction of Yuganskneftegas shares and an agreement on the sale of its subsidiary’s shares declared illegal.Read more »

February 21: Yukos creditors' committee sets out asset sale terms Read more »

February 21: PricewaterhouseCoopers's reputation may severely get burnt down on Yukos case and follow the notorious path of Arthur Andersen Read more »

February 21: The Russian Supreme Court has cancelled the 24-year sentence of former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin, who was found guilty of suborning murder. Interfax has discovered that the Court has sent his case back to the Moscow City Court for review, thus upholding the objection of the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office that the verdict was too lenient and should be set aside. ‘The Court bench has ruled that the verdict delivered against Alexei Pichugin as of August 17, 2006 should be cancelled and the case reconsidered by a new panel of judges’, the judge said. He noted that Mr. Pichugin was to remain in prison pending the reopening of proceedings . This means that the second criminal case brought against Mr. Pichugin, in which he was accused of organizing assassinations, will go to retrial, and that his defence’s appeal to have the verdict annulled on the grounds of lack of evidence of his involvement was refused. The Court has in the meantime upheld the sentences of the other five defendants in the case, sentences which ranged from 7.5 to 19 years in prison in maximum-security colonies. During the course of the Supreme Court hearing, Pichugin’s lawyer Georgy Kaganer said: ‘Officers from the Prosecutor-General’s office and the investigative agencies ought to have been content with the verdict - 24 years with no evidence at all to back up the charges’. The defence contends that Pichugin’s guilt failed to be proved in the lower court. ‘They want one thing above all: life imprisonment for Pichugin. If you take a look at the verdict, it refers all the time to “times unknown, in places unknown, along with unidentified Yukos executives”. They’re after only one thing - Pichugin’s testimony against himself and against Yukos executives’, said Mr. Kaganer. After the hearing, the prosecutor said that he was ‘satisfied with the bench’s ruling’. In reply Georgy Kaganer told Interfax, ‘How can you comment on the fact that the sentence was set aside because it was too lenient?’. (Interfax, 21.02.2007) Read more »

February 22: On March 27, the Russian Federal Property Fund will be auctioning off the 9.44% stake in Rosneft owned by Yukos, currently in receivership. A statement issued by the Fund says that Yuganskneftegas bills, valued at 3.6 billion rubles, are to be included with the Rosneft shares in a single lot with a reserve-price set at 195.5 billion rubles ($6.876 billion). Bids will rise by increments of 260 million rubles, and bids for participation in the auction will be accepted from February 26 until March 23, with each bidder required to place 39.1 billion rubles of earnest money in an escrow account at Gazprombank. The March 27 auction will take place at Yukos’s Moscow office on Dubininskaya Street. (Interfax, 22.02.2007)Read more »

February 22: Chita’s Magistrates’ Court is to hear on March 1 the case of Father Sergei Taratukhin, who took part in the unsanctioned February 8 picket in support of Khodorkovsky. ‘The case has been postponed because the judge’s tenure has expired’, the organizer of the picket, Marina Savateeva, has told Interfax. The hearing had earlier been set for Thursday February 22. The fate of the other three participants has already been decided by the Magistrates’ Court. The organizer, Marina Savateeva, was fined an estimated 1,000 rubles. Tatyana Maltseva and Valentina Neustoeva were acquitted. Marina Savateeva had previously filed an appeal against the refusal of the city’s Mayor’s office to allow the picket. On February 19, she filed a further appeal against the fine imposed by the Magistrates’ Court.‘The appeal against the illegal refusal to allow the picket in defense of Khodorkovsky will be heard in Chita’s Central Regional Court on February 26’, she said. The date of the hearing of the second appeal hasn’t yet been set. Members of the Committee for the Support of Khodorkovsky mounted a picket in Chita’s Decembrists’ Square on February 8. Their aim, they’ve said, was to attract public attention to, and to promote the early realease of, Mr. Khodorkovsky and former Menatep CEO Platon Lebedev, as well as to express their attitude to the new charges. (Interfax, 22.02.2007) Read more »

February 22: Former top managers of Yukos deplore the announcement of plans to hold a string of auction-sales of the company’s assets, says a statement released by them. According to Claire Davidson, their spokesperson: ‘As in the Yuganskneftegas case, the holders of the auctions are not concerned with maximizing returns to creditors, but with a division of the spoils in favour of state corporations. The only assets that have been - and probably will be - sold at real prices are those that have been legally sold outside Russia by Yukos management’. ‘We have to ask ourselves, I think’, she adds, ‘why they believe it necessary to offer a discount on assets which are extremely valuable, as is recognized around the world. The legality of the process is on a par with the proffered price. . .’ (Interfax, 22.02.2007) Read more »

February 26: Chita’s Central Regional Court Central has postponed until March 5 its hearing of the appeal filed by Marina Savateeva, the organizer of the demonstration in support of ex-head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Savateeva had challenged the refusal of the city’s Mayor’s office to allow the demonstration to take place. ‘The hearing was originally set for Monday, but the Court failed to receive the Mayor’s office’s written statement banning the protest, as it was supposed to’, Savateeva told. (Interfax, 26.02.2007)

On Monday the Moscow Arbitration Court postponed until March 12 the main hearing of the Russian Federal Tax Service’s plea to have the audit agreements between PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Yukos for the years 2002 to 2004 declared illegal. Interfax reports that the case has been continued because the candidate as commercial court assessor for PricewaterhouseCoopers has refused to participate in the case. (Interfax, 26.02.2007)

February 28: On March 1, Moscow’s Basmanny Court will be announcing its verdict in the case of two former managers of companies controlled by Yukos who are accused of embezzling $13 billion. “Judgment is set for March 1”, Anna Usakyova, Moscow City Court’s press officer, has told Interfax. During oral statements by both parties, the prosecution called for both accused - Vladimir Malakhovsky, former director-general of Ratibor, and Vladimir Pereverzin, deputy-director of Yukos’s foreign-debt department - to be given eleven-year sentences. On February 2 Moscow’s Basmanny Court issued a warrant in absentia for the arrest of another figure in the case, the former head of Fargoil Antonio Valdes-Garcia, whose bail was revoked on the grounds of his non-appearance. Proceedings in Moscow’s Basmanny Court are in camera. The Russian General-Prosecutor’s office has accused Malakhovsky, Pereverzin and Valdes-Garcia of large scale embezzlement of property by an organized group made up of a number of Yukos managers, as well as of the laundering of money criminally acquired by the group. (Interfax, 28.02.2007)

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March 2007

March 1: Moscow’s Basmanny Court has found the former managers of Yukos-controlled companies guilty of embezzling and laundering $13 billion. Read more »

March 2: The total value of Yukos’s assets is about $27 billion, company liquidator Eduard Rebgun has said in an interview with the Petroleum Information Agency (PIA) and the Vesti news-channel. They will be sold off by August this year, he added. Read more »

March 5: The Federal Service for the Supervision of the Use of Natural Resources may be handing over to the Public Prosecutor’s office the results of an inspection of Samaraneftgaz (a 100%-owned subsidiary of Yukos), the deputy-head of the Service, Oleg Mitvol, has told journalists in Samara. Read more »

Moscow’s Basmanny Court has sentenced two former heads of Yukos-controlled companies, charged with stealing $13 billion, to 11 and 12 years respectively.Read more »

March 6: Today, in Chita’s Central District Court, Marina Savateeva challenged the city administration’s refusal to issue a permit for her February picket. She asked the court for redress and for the authorization of a new picket to be mounted on Decembrists’ Square on March 10, between 4 and 6 p.m., under the terms of the original application. After Judge Sandanova had heard evidence from Alexandr Glushchenko, the head of the city administration who had signed the original refusal, she turned down the request of Marina Savateeva, who said she would be appealing the decision at the Chita Regional Court. The same District Court on the same day , however, did overturn a magistrate’s earlier decision to fine Ms. Savateeva for having organized the picket. The administration’s complaint against the Vice-Chairwoman of Chita’s Committee for the Support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky was deemed unjustified.

March 9: The Interior Ministry is investigating PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit - the Russian branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - in connection with tax claims on the company for 2002, and the General-Prosecutors’ Office is doing the same over the Yukos case, the company’s press-office has told Interfax. Read more »

March 12: Moscow’s Basmanny Court has extended until May 19 the pre-trial detention of Sergei Shimkevich, the former head of the Yukos-subsidiary Tomskneft, who’s been charged with the theft of 6 billion rubles. Read more »

Moscow’s Arbitration Court postponed until March 20 its review of the Federal Tax Service’s request for agreements concluded by and between PricewaterhouseCoupers Audit and Yukos for auditing services in 2002, 2003 and 2004 to be declared invalid. Read more »

March 15: A criminal case is opened against the ex-head of Samaranefteprodukt. Read more »

March 16: Marina Savateyeva, an organizer of a rally to support ex-Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovskiy in Chita on 8 February, has been acquitted by the Chita central district court, reported RIA Novosti news agency. The organizers of the rally informed the authorities that it would be a one-person demonstration for which an official permission from the mayor's office is not needed. However police decided that there were several people there taking part in the protest. Administrative proceedings were brought against four people including Savateyeva. Three of them had been cleared of charges, RIA Novosti said.

March 19: The bidding to participate in the new auctions for Yukos assets, which will take place on April 17, 18, and 20, 2007, will start today. The company will put up for sale lots four, five, and six. A total of 35 assets of the bankrupt company worth RUR3.6bn (approx. USD138m) are to be auctioned off. The bids for lot 4 will be accepted till April 13, 2007, for lot 5 till April 16, and for lot 6 till April 18. The assets' salesperson is Yukos's receiver Eduard Rebgun and the auction's organizer is the Russian Federal Property Fund. The fourth lot will include Yukos's stakes in various energy companies. The lot's starting price will stand at around RUR2.639bn (approx. USD101m), and the bid increment will amount to RUR26.39m (approx. USD1.01m). Bidding for the fifth lot will include nine assets and start at RUR992.314m (approx. USD38.09m), with bid increment of RUR9.923m (approx. USD381m). The sixth lot included eight non-core assets worth RUR3.129m (approx. USD120m), and the bid increment will amount to RUR31,000 (approx. USD1,190). (RosBusinessConsulting)

March 20: On Tuesday, Moscow’s Arbitration Court declared invalid the agreements reached between Yukos and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Russian office for auditing services between 2002 and 2004. Read more »

March 21: RIA-Novosti reported that lawyers representing Vladimir Malakhovsky and Vladimir Pereversin, the former director general of Yukos subsidiary Ratibor and the former deputy chief of Yukos' Internal Debt Board, have appealed against their conviction handed down by the Moscow City Court. Read more »

March 22: Regional court rules Father Sergiy Taratukhin not guilty. Read more »

March 23: TNK-BP subsidiary to bid for Yukos 9% stake in Rosneft March 27. Read more »

Today at 17:00 Moscow time the Russian Federal Property Fund stopped admitting requests to participate in the auction for the first lot of Yukos assets, which includes a 9.44% stake in Rosneft and Yuganskneftegas bills . At the present there are only two contenders for this lot: Rosneft subsidiary Razvitie and TNK-BP subsidiary Samotlorneftegas. (RosBusinessConsulting)

March 27: RN-Razvitiye, representing Rosneft’s interests, has acquired bankrupt Yukos’s 9.44% stake in Rosneft, according to a report from the auction hall by Interfax. The price paid was 197.84 billion rubles. A second company involved - Samotlorneftegas (a TNK-BP subsidiary) failed to increase its bid to 198.1 billion rubles. Samotlorneftegas opened by bidding the reserve price of 195.5 billion rubles, which Razvitiye upped to 196.52 billion. The auction was over in two minutes. (Interfax)

Yukos’s assets in the region may be sold in a single lot. One of the alternatives proposed to creditors by the Yukos receiver is to auction the company’s Samara assets in a single lot, the receiver’s spokesman Nikolai Lashkevich has told the Petroleum Information Agency. He stressed that it was ‘only one of the proposals. The ultimate decision will be taken by the creditors’ committee’, the next meeting of which, he added, ‘is to take place on Friday’. The Yukos receiver Eduard Rebgun, for his part, said that ‘one has to consider logistics’ when organizing assets like these into lots. Samaraneftegas and the Novokuybyshevsky and Kuybyshevsky refineries are the biggest Yukos units in the Samara region. (Interfax)

Representatives from GML (formerly Group Mentatep Ltd.), which controls 61% of Yukos’s shares, were not allowed to attend as observers the first auction of Yukos assets that took place on Tuesday, shareholders’ representatives told the Petroleum Information Agency in Moscow. ‘We were barred from attending on the grounds that we hadn’t applied to attend, even though we had repeatedly appealed to the Russian Federal Property Fund on precisely this issue’, their spokesman said. ‘We were told to apply to the receiver [Eduard Rebgun], who simply referred us back again to the Federal Property Fund’. The shareholders’ representative added, ‘We gave the security people copies of proxy letters, but they refused to let us in’. (Interfax)

March 28: Rosneft is interested in most of the bankrupt Yukos’s production-units, Rosneft vice-president Mikhail Stavsky told journalists on Wednesday. He didn’t elaborate on which particular companies Rosneft planned to bid for at auction, saying ‘You’ll be seeing which ones later’. Yukos’s main production-units are Tomskneft and Samaraneftefas, which are also among Yukos’s biggest creditors, with court-approved claims against it totalling 12.3 billion and 1.9 billion rubles respectively. (Interfax)

March 29: Journalist Vera Vasilieva comments on the Supreme Court’s decision in the Alexei Pichugin case. Read more »

Three companies, according to Eduard Sevgun, the bankrupt Yukos’s receiver, have signed up for a down payment for entry into the sale of its second lot, which includes a 20% stake in Gazpromneft - though he was unable to say who they were. ‘I have no idea of their identities. My lawyers are working on that’, he said. A source close to Yukos reported that one of the companies to have signed up to the pledge agreement is Unitex Ltd. But Gazprom, which is believed to have the most interest in the lot has told the Petroleum Information Agency that it ‘has made neither a bid not a pledge agreement’.The second lot in the sale of Yukos assets includes 20% of Gazpromneft (formerly Sibneft), 100% of Arktikgaz, 100% of Urengoil and 19 further assets. The reserve price is 144,776,328,088 rubles, with bids set to rise in increments of 260 million. The auction will take place on April 4, 2007. Bids are being accepted until April 2. (Interfax)

March 30: The committee of Yukos creditors has formed two more lots for auctions to sell the bankrupt company's assets, the press secretary for Yukos's bankruptcy manager said Friday. The first lot will include Yukos subsidiaries in the Krasnodar Territory in southern Russia. The second lot comprises oil refining and producing, energy, service and research assets of what was once Russia's largest oil company. A source close to the committee told RIA Novosti that the starting price of the first and second lots is 3 billion rubles ($115.3 million) and more than 166 billion rubles ($6.38 billion), respectively. According to preliminary information, the auctions will take place in early May. (RIA Novosti)

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April 2007

April 2: Russian oil producer OAO Lukoil Holdings is interested in bidding for the Krasnodar assets of bankrupt oil producer OAO Yukos, Lukoil Chief Executive Vagit Alekperov told. Yukos' receiver said Friday that the company's Krasnodar assets would be auctioned off May 3 at a starting price of 3.71 billion rubles ($142.7 million). The assets to be sold are primarily power holdings, including a 26% stake in OAO Kubanenergo, a regional utility. "We are interested in these assets, but I would not say categorically whether we will take part in the auction or not," Alekperov said, according to Russia news agency Interfax. (Dow Jones)

April 4: A subsidiary of Italy's Eni energy giant won the latest auction of assets of stricken oil company Yukos on Wednesday, paying 5.81 billion dollars for a package of assets. "The package has been sold to Enineftegaz at a price of 151.53 billion rubles (5.81 billion dollars/4.36 billion euros)," a spokesman for the state property fund said, referring to the Eni subsidiary. Eni's win represents a symbolic breakthrough for the company after months of negotiations with Russian authorities on prospects for investing in upstream assets in the energy sector. Meanwhile as it is known on Wednesday Eni has signed a call-option agreement with Gazprom, under which the Italian group could later sell the Russian group a key 20 per cent stake in oil business Gazpromneft in the event that Eni wins today’s auction of Yukos assets. However Gazprom does not doubt that it will be able to exercise its option to purchase YUKOS's assets from EniNeftegaz, the company's Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev told reporters today. He pointed out that the option was irrevocable and the company may start exercising it on Thursday. (AFP, FT, RosBusinessConsulting)

Russia's Federal Property Fund said a third auction, including Yukos's research and development assets, had been called off due to a lack of bids. (RIA Novosti)

April 5: General Prosecutors Office has completed the investigation of a criminal case against acting business-manager of oil company Yukos Alexey Kurtzin, the president of “Amalgama DVD Group” Boris Teremenko, as well as against Alexander Goldman and Maria Tikhopa. They were charged with a theft of 74 million roubles from oil company Yukos under the pretext of charity funds in April-June 2004. The press-service of General Prosecutors Office reported that the investigation completed and the documents are passed to the Tagansky Court of Moscow for further considering of the case. (Finmarket)

April 7: The central office of the bankrupt Yukos oil company, a 22-story building on Dubininskaya Street in the center of Moscow, will be sold off at an auction on May 11, the Russian Federal Property Fund, the auction's organizer, said. "Yukos moved into a new building in 2003. The office on Dubininskaya Street is 28,600 square meters in size. The office accommodates 1,300 workstations and is equipped with a network of some 400 kilometers of cable. The lot's starting price is 22 billion rubles. The auction increment is 110.355 million rubles. Bids will be accepted from April 9 to May 8. (Interfax)

April 9: According to the Petroleum Information Agency, Yukos has filed an appeal against the Moscow Arbitration Court’s dismissal of its suit seeking to have the mid-February sale of 43 shares in Yuganskneftegas (76.79% of its declared capital) pronounced illegal. (Interfax) Read more »

Moscow City Court to hear the Alexei Pichugin case on April 17. ‘On April 17, the Court will be starting proceedings in the case involving Yukos’s former head of security, Alexei Pichugin, who is charged with suborning murder. The case will be heard on its merits’, Anna Usacheva, a spokesperson for the Moscow City Court, told Interfax on Monday. On February 21, the Russian Supreme Court overturned Pichugin’s 24-year sentence and sent the case back for reconsideration by the Moscow City Court. The Prosecutor-General’s office had called for the quashing of the sentence and a retrial on the grounds that the term handed down had been too lenient, while Pichugin’s lawyers had called for the overturning of the sentence and the closure of the case against their client because of the lack of evidence that he had had anything to do with the crimes. (Interfax)

April 10: Yukos’s property is handed over to Italy’s EniNeftegaz. (Interfax) Read more »

April 12: Russia annuls Sakhalin II contract with PwC after 10 years of cooperation. (RIA Novosti) Read more »

April 17: The company Monte-Valle has won Tuesday the fourth round of the auction for assets of the now bankrupt oil company Yukos. (RIA Novosti) Read more »

Former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin pleaded innocent to new charges today during hearings at the Moscow City Court. Also today the prosecution examined a number of witnesses and alleged victims. According to the prosecution representative, Kamil Kashaev, they plan to interrogate about 100 witnesses on the case. In August 2006 Pichugin was found guilty organizing murders and murder attempts on businessmen and officials. (Interfax) Read more »

April 18: A subsidiary of Russia's state-run crude producer Rosneft has won the fifth auction for smaller assets of the now bankrupt oil company Yukos, the country's federal property fund said Wednesday. Neft-Aktiv was declared the auction winner after it offered 1.03 billion rubles (about $40 million) for the lot compared with the lot's initial price of 992.31 million rubles (about $38.5 million). The other bidders included the companies Akkord and MorTransInvest, the fund said. (RIA Novosti)

The account from which Monte Valle Ltd. transferred funds so that it could take part in the auction of Yukos’s power assets had been opened in Deutsche Bank, and the funds themselves had been transferred to it by UFG IS Trading Ltd., which also has an account there. Read more »

April 20: No applications have been received by the deadline for a sixth auction for smaller assets of the now bankrupt oil company Yukos, Russia's federal property fund said Thursday. The initial price of the lot for the sixth auction scheduled for April 20 was 3.13 million rubles (about $121,240), with a bid increment of 31,000 rubles (about $1,200), the fund said. (RIA Novosti)

April 23: Eni, Italy’s largest oil and gas company, is interested in keeping the 20% stake in Gazpromneft it bought at the Yukos bankriptcy sale, Eni’s CEO Paolo Scaroni said in an interview with Corriere della Sera. Eni would like to convince Gazprom of the fact that ‘its continued involvement would be in Gazprom’s best interests’, Mr. Scaroni is quoted by the Bloomberg agency as saying. At the same time he admitted that his company stands only an outside chance of keeping the stake. (Interfax)

Tatneft is considering bidding for some of the assets being auctioned off of bankrupt oil producer Yukos as it looks to expand operations beyond the Russian republic of Tatarstan, the company chairman, Tatarstan's Prime Minister Rustam Minnikhanov, said Monday. Asked by reporters if his company would be looking to bid for some of the Yukos assets, he said: "Why not? They are not being sold at too high a price so we will study it." "The board of directors regularly considers operations beyond Tatarstan and supports these plans," he said on the sidelines of an industry conference in London, declining to specify which assets he might be interested in. Yukos' two biggest remaining crude production units, Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz, are due to be auctioned off on May 3 and May 10 respectively. Tatneft produced around 508,000 b/d of oil in 2006. Most of the output came from fields in Tatarstan, one of Russia's oldest oil provinces, with smaller volumes from Orenburg and other regions. (Platts Commodity News)

April 24: Lukoil doesn’t plam to take part in the sale of the bankrupt Yukos’s assets, Lukoil vice-president Leonid Fedun has told journalists in London. ‘The main assets, as we’ve seen, have more or less gone, so we don’t feel the need to participate’. Earlier, Lukoil president Vagit Alekperov had said that the company was interested in the acquisition of Yukos’s assets in the south of Russia, but that it hadn’t yet made a final decision about getting involved in the auction. (Interfax)

April 25: Russia's government-controlled foreign trade bank Vneshtorgbank has bought a 7.69% stake in VTB Bank (Deutschland) AG at an auction for Yukos assets, the federal property fund said Wednesday. VTB offered 234.1 million rubles (about $9.1 million) for the bank's 100 ordinary registered non-documentary shares compared with the initial price of 231.82 million rubles ($9.0 million), the federal property fund said. Interfin Trade finance company was VTB's rival at the auction, the fund said. (RIA Novosti)

April 26: On Tuesday, according to a statement from the Russian Federal Property Fund, JVP Invest bought at open auction 2% of the Khanty-Mansiysky Bank that had been held by Yukos. The Bank’s shares, with an initial reserve price of 163,442 million rubles, were finally knocked down for 333,378 million. That was the sixth Yukos asset sold at the auction. (Interfax)

Neft Aktiv Ltd, representing Rosneft’s interests, has signed a deposit agreement with Yukos’s receiver to take part in the auction of lot No. 10, comprised of Tomskneft and assets in eastern Siberia. The lot, with a starting price of 166.3 billion rubles, contains 100% of Tomskneft, 70.78% of Vostsibneftgaz, 5.89% of Eniseyneftegaz, and 100% each of Angarsk Oil and Chemical, the Achinsky oil refinery and the Angarsk polymer plant. The auction of these properties is to take place on May 3, with a deposit for entrance set at 33.3 billion rubles and with bidders accepted between April 2 and April 28. Bids will be upped by 260 million rubles a time. If Rosneft wins the auction it will become the largest oil producer in Russia.

The roughly 9.44% stake in Rosneft that had earlier belonged to Yukos will now be mainly used for the acquisition of new assets, Rosneft president Sergey Bogdanchikov has told a press conference in Izhevsk - ‘though I suppose, given the company’s capitalization growth, some minor shareholding may be sold off. It’s too early, however, to think about that’, he added. (Interfax)

April 28: Moscow’s Taganka Court won’t be returning to the Prosecutor’s office the case of Yukos deputy executive-manager Alexei Kurtsin, who is charged with embezzling and laundering an estimated 74 million rubles. In refusing to do this, the Court rejected a defence motion calling for the case to be sent back there for the removal of violations. The court also dismissed a motion by Mr. Kurtsin’s defence which demanded that certain evidence be excluded on the grounds of what the defence deems to be its inadmissibility. The Court has set May 17 for the trial of the case on its merits. (Interfax)

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May 2007

May 3: Promregion Holding has bought the assets of the now bankrupt oil company Yukos located in southern Russia, the auction commission said Thursday. Promregion Holding, believed to be affiliated with Russia's largest crude producer LUKoil, offered 4.9 billion rubles (about $190 million) for the bankrupt oil company's assets in the Krasnodar Territory, compared with an initial lot price of 3.17 billion rubles (about $123 million), the commission said. However, a LUKoil representative said Thursday that Promregion Holding had no relation to the company. "This company has no relation to us," Dmitry Dolgov said in reply to the question about whether the auction bidder was affiliated with LUKoil. (RIA Novosti)

A subsidiary of Russia's state-controlled oil company Rosneft has bought the Eastern Siberia oil assets of the now bankrupt oil firm Yukos for 175.7 billion rubles (about $6.82 billion), a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Thursday. The initial lot price that included Yukos' largest oil producing and refining companies in Russia's east was 166.34 billion rubles (about $6.46 billion), with the deposit sum of 33.27 billion rubles (about $1.29 billion) and a bid increment of 260 million rubles (about $10 million). Neft-Aktiv, the auction winner, and Unitex, affiliated with private gas company Novatek, vied for the Eastern Siberia prize assets of the bankrupt oil company, the auction commission said. (RIA Novosti)

May 7: Hearing over illegality of auction of Yuganskneftegas sale postponed. Read more »

May 8: Shell Neft, a Russian-based Shell subsidiary, intends to take part in the auction of Yukos trade companies, a source close to Yukos told the Petroleum Information Agency. Maxim Shub, the spokesperson for Shell Russia, said his company “has always regarded Russia as a strategic upstream and downstream market and constantly looks for opportunities for development, including in the gas station market”. At the same time, he declined to comment on the possible participation of Shell Neft in the auction of Yukos trade companies. (Interfax)

May 10: Rosneft has bought Samaraneftegas. A subsidiary of Russia's state-controlled oil company Rosneft has bought the Volga area oil assets of Yukos for 165.53 billion rubles (about $6.4 billion). Neft-Aktiv, the auction winner, vied for Yukos' oil extracting, oil and gas refining, research and maintenance assets in the Samara region along with Versar. The initial lot price was 154 billion rubles (about $5.99 billion), with a bid increment of 260 million rubles (about $10.1 million), the auction commission said. Yukos has secured 690 billion rubles (about $26.8 billion) from its assets sold in eleven lots at auctions against its liabilities of 709 billion rubles (about $27.6 billion), the press secretary for the Yukos bankruptcy manager said. "Considering two forthcoming auctions for lot No. 12 to be held today and lot No. 13 to be held Friday, with an estimated sum of 30 billion rubles (about $1.1 billion), all of the creditors' claims will be met in full," Nikolai Lashkevich said. (RIA Novosti)

Unitex has bought Yukos' oil sale companies for 12.46 billion rubles (about $483.5 million) at an auction for the assets of the bankrupt oil firm. Unitex, affiliated with Russia's largest independent natural gas producer Novatek, was admitted to the auction along with Neft-Aktiv (a subsidiary of Russia's state-controlled crude producer Rosneft), TNK-Yugra (a structure of Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP), Versar, and Shell-Neft (a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell). However, Neft-Aktiv and Versar failed to register for the auction. The initial price of the lot that largely included retail oil sale companies in central Russia was 7.7 billion rubles ($298.7 million), the auction commission said. Maksim Shub, a spokesman for Shell, said the auction results will not affect the Anglo-Dutch giant's plans to develop a network of filling stations in Russia. (RIA Novosti)

Russia's federal anti-monopoly service has denied Promregion Holding, the winner of the auction for the Yukos southern assets, to effect the purchase. On May 3, Promregion Holding, believed to be affiliated with Russia's largest crude producer LUKoil, won the auction for Yukos assets in the Krasnodar Territory in southern Russia, after it offered 4.9 billion rubles (about $190 million) compared with an initial lot price of 3.17 billion rubles (about $123 million), the auction commission earlier said. Nikolai Lashkevich said the Yukos bankruptcy manager has received a notice of purchase denial from the anti-monopoly service May 8 and is now studying the situation. "It is not ruled out that a repeat auction may be held," Lashkevich said. Promregion Holding participated in the auction along with Versar and Neft-Aktiv, a subsidiary of state-controlled crude producer Rosneft, the auction commission earlier said. A LUKoil representative denied reports May 3 that Promregion Holding had any links to the company. (RIA Novosti)

May 11: An obscure company, Prana, has bought the office and research assets in an auction of now bankrupt oil giant Yukos for 100.091 billion rubles ($3.87 billion). Prana, whose beneficiaries are unknown, made a bid that exceeded the starting price by almost five times outstripping its only rival in the auction, Neft-Aktiv, a subsidiary of state-controlled Rosneft, which has already snapped up the bulk of Yukos assets in previous auctions. "We did not expect the price to jump so high and competition to be so fierce," said Nikolai Lashkevich, press secretary for the Yukos bankruptcy receiver. The initial lot price, that included the former 22-story Yukos central office in Moscow, was 22 billion rubles (about $855 million), with a bid increment of 110.36 million rubles (about $4.3 million). (RIA Novosti)

May 15: Federal antimonopoly service may prevent the Prana company from obtaining Yukos offices. Read more »

May 16: Neft-Activ, a subsidiary of state-controlled Rosneft oil company, bought Wednesday the latest lot of Yukos non-core assets for 1.8 billion rubles ($70 million). Neft-Aktiv and two other companies were on the bidding list for service and IT assets of the bankrupt oil company. A total of eight bids were made during the auction, which lasted about five minutes. The initial lot price at the 14th Yukos auction was 1.7 billion rubles (about $66 mln), with a bid increment of 16.7 million rubles (over $648,500). The previous 13 auctions netted more than 800 billion rubles (over $31bln). (RIA Novosti)

May 17: Moscow city court extended until September 2 the custody of Yukos executive vice-president, Vasily Alexanyan, who is accused of money laundering. Read more »

May 18: The Moscow Arbitration Court sided with Rosneft and declared invalid a judgment to exact from Yuganskneftegas more than 13 billion roubles ($500 million) in favour of “Yukos Capital S.A.R.L. a company affiliated with the management of Yukos. Thus, Moscow Court ruled to satisfy the claim of state-owned Rosneft which lodged a complaint against the decision of the International Commercial Arbitration Court which ruled in favour of Yukos Capital in September 2006. According to a Rosneft representative, the decision of the International Court was invalid because “two of the judges from the international arbitration board took part in scientific conferences, which were organised by the law firm representing the interests of Yukos Capital”. According to Rosneft, that means “the judges were the interested party as far as they were in commercial relationship with the law firm”. The spokesperson for Yukos Capital rejected the allegations maintaining that this type of conferences attracts many professionals including judges, attorneys, and lawyers. And participation in these events does not necessarily mean they [professionals] are bribed. (RIA-Novosti)

May 21: Debts of Yukos to creditors included in the register are RUR 709.5bln ($27.5bln). Income of the bankrupt from sales of its assets started in March 2007, is expected to exceed RUR 824bln, or $31.9bln. According to an estimate of receiver Eduard Rebgun, total debts of the company at the moment of liquidation may go up to $44.9bln, or 1.16 trillion which means $13bln may not be sufficient to pay off creditors. About $8.36bln are debts not included in the register, mainly oustanding taxes. Last time tax claims - RUR 31.8bln for 2005 - were included in the creditors' register in December 2006. $850mln are debts of Yukos for its day-to-day operations, about $8.2bln - debts which arbitration courts refused to include in the register and written off of books of Yukos. This sum includes the largest dubious debt of related with GML Yukos Capital S.A.R.L., headed by former YUKOS Oil Company Financial Director Bruce Misamore. Since 2006 Yukos Capital tried to include in the register a RUR128bln ($5bln) debt for loans drawn by YUKOS Oil Company in 2003-2004. On May 24, 2007 Yukos Capital suit will be considered by Appeal arbitration court. (SKRIN Newswire)

May 22: On May 17 and 18, Yukos filed two suits with Moscow’s arbitration court challenging two deals providing Yukos loans by Luxembourg Yukos Capital S.a.r.l. for $350 million and 80 billion roubles, the spokesperson for Yukos receiver, Nikolay Lashkevich, told the Petroleum Information Agency. Yukos has lodged suits requesting the deals be declared invalid. Yukos attracted Yukos Capital loans in December 2003. The repayment date for the loan of 80 billion roubles is the end of 2008, and for the $350 million one – the end of 2009. Earlier, Rosneft managed to challenge Yukos Capital’s claims estimated at over 11 billion rubles on Yuganskneftegas (earlier Yukos subsidiary, at present Rosneft main asset). The court also rejected including Yukos Capital’s claims, estimated at 128.8 billion roubles in the Yukos creditors’ register. (Interfax)

Russia's anti-monopoly service has postponed until August 2 a deal worth nearly $4 billion to sell former Yukos offices to Prana, saying it needs more information on the company's owners, a Russian business daily said. Read more »

May 23: A Moscow arbitration appeals court has thrown out a motion by bankrupt oil company Yukos to overturn the 2004 sale of its then core production unit, Yuganskneftegaz. A 76.79% stake in Yuganskneftegaz was sold by Russia's federal property fund on December 19, 2004, in lieu of Yukos' tax arrears for 2000 and 2001. A few days later, state-controlled crude producer Rosneft bought the asset from the winner of the auction, a previously unknown company called Baikal Finance Group. The group was widely believed to be a vehicle set up to enable Rosneft to cheaply acquire the stake. (RIA Novosti)

May 28: The Russian competition regulator allowed Monday the obscure company Prana to buy the Moscow headquarters of Yukos and its research assets, auctioned off earlier this month for nearly $4 billion. After outbidding a subsidiary of the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in a May 11 auction by raising the initial price by more than 300%, Prana received a requirement from the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to disclose its beneficiaries and sources for the acquisition. Had it failed to do so, other participants who would pay its bid would have acquired the lot. Three days after the required disclosures made on Friday, the regulator said on its Web site that Prana's acquisition of the advanced 22-story 29,000-square-meter (87,000-square-foot) building in downtown Moscow and of a host of research assets of the bankrupt Yukos oil company would not affect competition and was therefore allowed. (RIA Novosti)

May 30: Previously unknown company Prana, which won an auction earlier this month for the headquarters of bankrupt oil firm Yukos for nearly $4 billion, has fully paid for the building, the Yukos bankruptcy administrator said Wednesday. Nikolai Lashkevich said Prana made a final payment of 95.68 billion rubles (about $3.7 billion) into a Yukos account on May 29. The Rosneft CEO denied any connection between his company and Prana. "The structure is categorically not ours," Sergei Bogdanchikov said. "We have never heard of it." (RIA Novosti)

Moscow city court postpones until June 18 consideration of the appeal against the guilty verdicts passed on former executives of Yukos controlled companies convicted for embezzlement of $13 billion. As Interfax reports, consideration of the case is postponed since the judges need more time to familiarise themselves with the materials of the case. Moscow city court was to have considered on Monday the cassation appeals against the guilty verdict handed to ex-CEO of Ratibor company, Vasily Alexanyan Malakhovsky, and former deputy director of Yukos external debt department, Vladimir Pereverzin. They had been convicted of embezzlement of $13 billion and sentenced to 11 and 13 years imprisonment respectively. (Interfax)

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June 2007

June 4: The Moscow City Court has upheld a custody extension until August 31 for the former head of a Yukos subsidiary, charged with embezzlement and money laundering, a lawyer for the accused said Monday. Viktor Danilchenko said the court turned down an appeal from the defense and granted an extension in Sergei Shemkevich's custody, the former general director of Tomskneft, the largest subsidiary of now bankrupt Yukos oil company. He is accused of misappropriating 5.93 billion rubles ($229 million) and laundering the illegal receipts. Shimkevich's arrest was sanctioned by the Basmanny Court of Moscow on January 18 this year following a request from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office. Shimkevich was detained January 16 in Siberia's Tomsk Region while serving as a deputy in the regional legislature. He was deprived of his mandate following the sanction for his arrest. (RIA Novosti)

June 7: A lot of shares of Samara bank “Solidarnost” that used to belong to Yukos was bought at auction by limited company CenterInvestTrading for 204.61 million roubles ($7.93 million ). Along with CenterInvesTrading, Rosfinconsult and one other person took part in the auction. The initial price of the lot was 162.39 million roubles ($6.29 million). (RIA Novosti)

June 8: Previously unknown company Prana, which won an auction earlier this month for the headquarters of bankrupt oil firm Yukos, has been granted ownership rights for the building. Read more »

June 14: State-controlled oil company Rosneft will acquire bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos'assets in the south of Russia. Read more »

June 18: The Moscow City Court postponed until June 21 the consideration of an appeal concerning the conviction judgement brought against two former managers of Yukos subsidiaries, Vladimir Malakhovsky and Vladimir Pereverzin. The hearings were postponed because the defence insisted that both the accused men should be present at the hearings. However, the request to examine Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a witness for the defence was rejected. Both managers were accused of embezzling $13 billion US dollars and were sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment. Another co-defendant for this case was Antonio Valdes Garcia, who escaped the arrest. Neither Mr Garcia’s lawyers nor the Spanish embassy in Russia has any information concerning his whereabouts. According to some sources, it is possible he is in the UK at the moment. (RIA-Novosti)

June 21: The Moscow City Court upheld Thursday a lower court's ruling to sentence two former executives of bankrupt oil company Yukos's subsidiaries to 11 and 12 years in prison for embezzling $13 billion. Read more »

June 25: PwC has withdrawn its audit reports for Yukos for 1995-2004. The statement was made personally by the chief prosecutor, Yuri Chaika. He probably considered the news to be of such overwhelming importance that it could not be left to the care of the PwC press service. Below is a timeline of the pressure on the PwC office in Russia. Read more »

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July 2007

July 4: Former Yukos executive, Vladimir Pereverzin, convicted to 11 years’ imprisonment for oil embezzlement of some $13 billion from Yukos subsidiaries and money laundering estimated at $8.5 billion instructed his lawyer, Alexei Dudnik, yesterday to file an appeal against the Russian judicial system to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. For the first time, the appeal will focus on serious inconsistencies in the rulings passed by Russian Federation courts in Yukos cases. Read more »

July 6:Rosneft bought Yukos headquarters and its traders from Prana company for $3.4 billion, according to a Rosneft memo drawn up ahead of a eurobonds issue. More specifically, Rosneft bought Trading House Yukos-M, Yukos Exploration and Production, Yukos Rening and Marketing, Yukos Financial Accounting centre, Yukos-Moskva, ‘Dubininskoye’ – a 22-storey building – and Yukos headquarters at Paveletsky railway station. The company did not disclose whether other Moscow-based Yukos property was involved in the deal, including a 77.4% stake in the United Research and Development Centre located in Leninsky prospect street in Moscow, 61% in the Scientific Research Institute of economy of the aviation industry (office in Ulansky pereulok), and 100% in TopMaster-Realty (several buildings in Zagorodnoye shosse and Malaya Tulskaya str.) Rosneft said that the Yukos-M assets,were an indispensable part of the management system of oil production and refinery companies that it had purchased earlier. They include a considerable part of turnover, trade stock, infrastructure, contractual rights, systems of management data, staff and ‘know-how’. (Interfax, 06.07.2007)

The Ingodinsky region’s magistrates’ court in Chita will hear an administrative case on July 12 filed against Marina Savvateeva, the deputy head of Chita’s public committee in support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. She had organised the fireworks near the Chita pre-trial detention facility in order to honour Khodorkovsky’s birthday. Read more »

July 9: Today, in Miassky court the former mayor of Trekhgorny city, Nikolay Lubenets, charged with abuse of authority in the Yukos case, made his final statement. He said that he was not admitting any guilt. “My team, myself and the city council worked in full compliance with the legislation in place at the time,” he insisted. According to the Prosecutor General’s office, while in office as mayor for a closed city, Lubenets illegally granted tax cuts to Yukos subsidiaries registered in Trekhgorny. The prosecution sought five years’ imprisonment for the defendant. On July 16, the judge will deliver his verdict on Nikolay Lubenets. ("Ńhelyabinsk.ru", 09.07.2007)

July 10: Moscow city court listens to Alexei Pichugin’s statement. Read more »

July 12: Russian oil major Rosneft won an auction for some property and equipment of bankrupt firm Yukos on Thursday, paying $229 million for assets that may help it secure large oil reserves. Rosneft, which has so far emerged as the winner of almost all important Yukos property auctions, beat previously unknown firm Benefit with a bid just 2 percent above the starting price at an auction which took less than 10 minutes. The lot included property rights and equipment at 10 large oil and gas fields in East and West Siberia and their owner will have advantage in booking reserves in the future. Industry experts say the fields may contain hundreds of millions of barrels in probable and possible reserves. (Reuters)

July 12: Hearing of Marina Savvateeva’s administrative case postponed. Read more »

July 13: For Alexei Pichugin if the prosecution gets its way. The prosecutor is asking the court to sentence former Yukos security chief, Alexei Pichugin, to life imprisonment. Earlier, Pichugin had been convicted to 24 years in prison on multiple murder charges.Moscow city court held a hearing of the arguments in the case on Friday, an Interfax correspondent reported. The prosecutor was the first to take the floor and asked for the sentence on the defendant. (Interfax, 13.07.2007)

July 12: “Now PwC has taken the side of officials in the Yukos trial” Read more »

July 13: Prosecution demands life sentence for Alexei Pichugin. Read more »

July 16: Miassky city court read out a verdict on the former mayor of Trekhgorny city, Nikolay Lubenets, who had been accused of abusing his authority in the Yukos case. The former official was given four years on parole. The court also stripped him of the right to take executive or administrative office in state or municipal institutions for two years. The court took into account a number of attenuating circumstances. These included the defendant’s health as well as awards and acknowledgements he had received. During the hearing, the prosecutor's office had sought five years imprisonment in a minimum security colony for the defendant. Lubenets was accused of abuse of power to the benefit of Yukos’ senior management. According to the prosecution, between 1999 and 2000, Lubenets provided extra tax relief to shell companies controlled by Yukos (Nortex, Kverkus, Greis, Muskron and Virtus). This made it possible to divert several hundred million dollars in tax payments from the regional and federal treasuries. (Gazeta.ru)

July 17: On August 6, Moscow city court to read out verdict on former Yukos security chief, Alexei Pichugin. Read more »

July 19: Today, the magistrates’ court of the Chita Ingodinsky regional court heard the administrative case filed against Marina Savvateeva. Read more »

July 20: The Prosecutor General’s office is seeking to put on trial a well-known tax lawyer, Andrey Nikolaev-Polynovsky, a co-founder of the law firm, Intellect group. According to the investigation, he, along with Tomskneft-VNK (a Yukos subsidiary) executive, Sergei Shumkevich, embezzled and laundered 715 million roubles transferred as fees to his law firm. Read more »

July 26: Chita magistrates’ court is to continue hearing on July 27 the case involving Marina Savvateeva , the head of the Chita-based public committee in support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Read more »

July 27: The Chita Magistrates Court imposed today a penalty of 1.500 roubles ($59) on Marina Savvateeva for organising fireworks to honour Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s birthday on 26 June 2007. The court based the sanction on article 20.2 of the code of administrative violations as Savvateeva had organised a public celebration in order to draw public attention to Mr. Khodorkovsky’s case. On her side, Ms. Savvateeva denied organising any public event: “We just wanted to celebrate at a private party the birthday of Mr. Khodorkovsky and therefore drank some soda to his honour.” In court she said that “police present at the gathering did not address any complaints to us from the Committee, but instead to the representatives of the media filming the prison sites.” (RIA Novosti)

Yukos Capital S.a.r.l. has been unable to secure endorsement of the ruling delivered by the International Commercial Arbitration Court of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation (ICAC) that Rosneft should pay back $490 million. Read more »

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August 2007

August 5: The organizer of a fireworks display to mark Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s birthday in June has challenged the fine imposed by the district court. On July 27 the magistrates’ court in Chita’s Ingodinsky district imposed a fine of 1500 roubles on Marina Savvateeva for organizing the fireworks display. Savvateeva violated administrative legislation not during the fireworks display, stated the court, but by announcing the event the previous day during a picket organized in support of Khodorkovsky and in the mass media. Savvateeva disputed such a decision. The fireworks display to mark Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s birthday was held by his supporters on June 26 near the Chita pre-trial detention facility where he is currently imprisoned. (Zabinfo.ru)

August 6: The Moscow City Court convicted a former top security officer with the Yukos oil company on charges of organizing three murders and four attempted murders. Alexei Pichugin was sentenced to 24 years in prison on similar charges last August. But prosecutors had appealed for a life sentence and Russia's highest court had ordered a retrial. On Monday, at the conclusion of the new trial, the Moscow City Court ruled that Pichugin was guilty of organizing three murders and four attempted murders. The sentence was not immediately known: A judge was expected to continue reading the long sentence for most of the day, said court spokeswoman Anna Usacheva. Pichugin, the former head of Yukos security service, has insisted he is innocent. Pichugin's lawyers will appeal verdict. Read more »

August 8: Moscow City Court extended custody for Yukos executive vice-president Alexanyan until December 2. Alexanyan is charged with embezzlement and money laundering, said Anna Usacheva, spokesperson for the court’s press-service. ‘The court granted the request of the Prosecutor's office that Alexanyan be remanded in custody for a further 3 months’, she said. The Yukos vice-president is accused of embezzlement or misuse of funds as well as money laundering. According to the Prosecutor General’s office, he embezzled the property of the Tomskneft company and the shares of its oil refineries and oil producing companies. Alexanyan denies the charges.

With its second bid Rosneft won the 18th auction of Yukos-held assets, under receivership. Rosneft’s final offer was 18,576 million 680,829.28 rubles. The starting price was set at 18,284 million 259,829.28 rubles and only one bid increment of 92 million 421,000 rubles was announced. The two participating companies were Rosneft and Benefit. The 18th lot included the shares of Yukos transport companies, comprised in the unsold 16th lot as well as Yukos companies in the CIS. Registered ordinary shares of the following companies were included: ES Financial-industrial group, Investment company Yukos-Invest, Ordalia 2000, Rus, Yukos-Transservis, Yukos-Inform, TV company Special Television, Kuybishevnefteorgsintez, Kafa, Vostok Asia Transit LLK, YUKOS UK Limited, YuM Trade. Also sold were the Yukos stakes in the Granit private security company, the Service of Corporate Security, Uchet i otchetnost, FTT Servis and Yukos CIS Investment. (Gazeta.ru)

August 13: Rosneft is to take part on August 15 in the auction of all shares in Yukos Finance B.V., owner of all Yukos foreign assets, said a source close to the auction process. Rosneft has already made a bid, says the source, and will take part in the auction independently without involving its subsidiaries. He added that the auction will take place but declined to mention other contestants. The starting price amounts to 7,598 billion rubles ($298 ěëí). The announcement concerning the auction doesn’t name the list of assets controlled by YF but it was reported earlier that one of its main assets is a 49% stake in Slovak pipeline company Transpetrol. (Interfax)

Investigator from the Yukos case is handling probe into major cell-phone company. Last week a series of searches and interrogations of the top managers of cell phone retailers Euroset were conducted as part of the investigation of the criminal case opened against the company. RBC daily has now learned that the investigation is being handled by Mikhail Bezugly, the senior investigator for major cases at the Prosecutor General’s Office. The most famous case in Bezugly’s career to date is that of Yukos. He issued the arrest warrant for Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October 2003 and afterwards played an active part in the investigation. This information has increased alarm among others in the same market. ‘The risks of conducting business in Russia give cause for concern’, Motorola representative Kirill Lubnin told RBC daily. A leading analyst at the Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin pointed out the inconsistencies in the behaviour of the investigators: ‘Why should they have searched Alexei Chuikin’s flat? He’s been Euroset president for less than a month. Why should they have questioned Mr. Papin [Alexander Papin, Euroset vice-president for finances]? He has nothing to do with purchasing.’ Murtazin expressed his indignation and commented: ‘Raids on the offices of other retailers seem to be a red herring. These measures target Euroset alone. Someone has an eye on its business’. (Timofey Dzyadko, RBC daily, 13.08.2007)

August 15: A company earlier believed to be affiliated with Rosneft bought overseas assets of Yukos for 7.8 billion rubles ($307 million) at an auction Wednesday. Promneftstroi competed for the Yukos assets along with Versar, another little-known company that previously made unsuccessful bids at Yukos sell-offs, through which the company's remaining assets are being liquidated to meet creditors' claims. The starting price for Netherlands-based Yukos Finance, the owner of the bankrupt firm's overseas assets, was set at 7.6 billion rubles (about $298 million), with bid increments of 40 million rubles (about $1.6 million), according to auction organizers. After the auction, Rosneft denied that Promneftstroi was in any way affiliated with the company. "Rosneft did not participate in this auction," a company spokesman said. Monte Valle, which won the fourth auction held on April 17 for the Yukos energy assets in the Tambov and Belgorod Regions in central and southwest Russia by offering 3.56 billion rubles (about $140 million) for the lot, up from the starting price of 2.64 billion rubles (about $102.2 million), said it purchased Promneftstroi from Rosneft recently for participation in the trading. Monte Valle's ownership structure has not been disclosed. (RIA Novosti)

State-controlled crude producer Rosneft acquired the debt portfolio of bankrupt oil company Yukos at a liquidation auction Wednesday for 11.55 billion rubles ($453 million). Rosneft won the auction at one bid increment above the starting price. The only other bidder at the last auction for the Yukos assets was a little-known company, Benefit, which previously made unsuccessful bids at Yukos sell-offs. Rosneft, Yukos's second-largest creditor, has won all the main Yukos liquidation auctions. Through buying up Yukos's key production and refining assets, Rosneft has become one of Russia's leading oil producers. (RIA Novosti)

The new owner of the Yukos headquarters in Moscow has removed the company’s yellow and green triangle from the roof, reports the Interfax news agency. Today the two last auctions of Yukos assets began there. The logo was still on the roof a week ago when the company’s transport assets were auctioned off in the building. Yukos signs near the central entrance have not yet been removed. (CITY-FM)

August 17: A former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin has appealed a court ruling sentencing him to life in prison for organizing a series of murders and attempted murders, a defence lawyer said Friday. Read more »

August 20: Late on Friday night the Yukos sign over the entry to the company’s former headquarters on Dubininskaya Street was removed. The new owner Rosneft thus put an end to the story of what was once the biggest Russian oil company. Several days before, the Yukos logo, a green and yellow triangle, was removed from the roof of the building. Read more »

August 24: A Moscow court has extended a custody term for the former head of a Yukos subsidiary, charged with embezzlement and money laundering, until December 16, a court spokesman said Thursday. Sergei Shemkevich, the former general director of Tomskneft, the largest subsidiary of the now bankrupt Yukos oil company, is accused of misappropriating 5.93 billion rubles ($229 million) and laundering the illegal receipts. "The Basmanny Court of Moscow has met the motion from the Prosecutor General's Office and extended the custody term for Shimkevich until December 16," the spokesman said. (RIA Novosti) Moscow’s Dorogomilovsky court has given permission for the prosecution of Tomskneft lawyer Andrey Nikolaev-Polynovsky, co-founder of the Intellect group law firm, who is suspected of embezzlement estimated to be worth 715 million roubles. Thus, the court has granted the request lodged by the Prosecutor General’s office. Read more »

Expert of internet edition Izbrannoe, Andrey Sotnik, comments on yesterday’s ruling by the Swiss Federal Tribunal. Read more »

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September 2007

September 5: Validity of auction of Yuganskneftegas shares will be reconsidered once again. The federal arbitration court of Moscow district has set October 1 to hear the cassation appeal against the decision by the Moscow arbitration court and the ninth arbitration court of appeal, which had accepted as valid the auction of Yuganskneftegas shares. Read more »

September 6: The lawyers of former Yukos employee, Aleksey Pichugin placed at the disposal of his site questions from the European Court for Human Rights to the government of the Russian Federation. Read more »

September 22: Mikhail Brudno given asylum in Lithuania. The former vice president of Yukos is recognised a victim of political persecution. Read more »

September 25: On Tuesday the Moscow Arbitration Court deferred until 17 October its preliminary hearing of the claim made by Moravel Investment Ltd against Yukos for the recovery of $860 million in debt. (Moravel is a subsidiary of the Menatep Group, the main shareholder in Yukos.) As journalists in the courtroom were told, the hearing was deferred so that additional documentation might be submitted. Read more »

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October 2007

October 1: Today the Federal Arbitration Court of the Moscow district confirmed as valid the sale by auction of shares in Yuganskneftegaz. Read more »

October 8: The Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal adjourned until Tuesday 9 October its review of the appeal by PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit. The Russian branch of the American accounting firm is objecting to the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court, which ruled that the contracts for audit between the accounting firm and Yukos in 2002 to 2004 were invalid.Read more »

The Moscow City Court has prolonged custody of the former manager of the Tomskneft oil company. Sergei Shimkevich stands accused of embezzling 6 billion roubles. Read more »

The Moscow Arbitration Court decided to include claims of more than 1 billion roubles in the register of Yukos creditors. Journalists at the court were told that it had approved the demands of Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft for 870.5 million and 202.6 million roubles, respectively. Read more »

October 9: PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit back in court on 12 October. On Tuesday the Ninth Appellate Arbitration Court adjourned until Thursday its hearing of the appeal by the Russian branch of the American accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers against the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court. According to that ruling, the contracts concluded with PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit by Yukos for auditing of the company’s accounts in 2002 to 2004 were invalid. Journalists at the court on Tuesday were told that statements by both sides had been heard that day.(Interfax, 09.10.2007)

October 12: On Friday the Ninth Appellate Arbitration Court deferred until 26 October its review of the appeal by PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit (PwC). The Russian branch of the American accounting firm is objecting to the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court, which ruled that the contracts for audit between the accounting firm and Yukos in 2002 to 2004 were invalid. Read more »

October 15: The Moscow Arbitration Court declared that demands for 217.2 billion roubles in taxes from Yukos by the Federal Tax Service were justified. Read more »

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November 2007

November 1: Dutch court rules that auction of Yukos Dutch assets was illegal, reports the Associated Press. Read more »

November 8: 12 November has been set as the date on which Eduard Rebgun, the administrator of Yukos, will report on completion of the sale by auction of the company’s assets, journalists were told today by the Moscow Arbitration Court’s press service. Read more »

November 12: The Moscow Arbitration Court has decided to wind up the auction process under which Yukos assets have been sold off. Read more »

The official receiver for Yukos plc Eduard Rebgun is contesting the decision of the court in Amsterdam, which declared that the firing of the former directors of Yukos Finance, Bruce Misamore and David Godfrey, was unlawful. Read more »

From 13 November onwards the Russian Trading Systems Stock Exchange will no longer list or deal in Yukos ordinary shares. Read more »

November 16: The Moscow City Court has prolonged until 2 March 2008 the detention in custody of Vasily Alexanyan, the executive vice-president of Yukos. He is charged with misappropriation and embezzlement of the property of others. Read more »

November 20: On 5 December the Ingodinsky district court in Chita will hear an appeal by Marina Savateyeva, who organised a fireworks display in honour of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s birthday this summer. Read more »

November 23: As of Friday 23 November 2007 the Russian Trading Systems (RTS) exchange and the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) have ceased dealing in Yukos ordinary shares, say press releases from the two stock exchanges. Read more »

November 26: Russian law enforcement agencies report that the general director of one of the firms controlled by Yukos has been apprehended in the Moscow Region. There was an international warrant out for her arrest. Alla Karaseva, director general of Forest Oil, was detained in Dolgoprudnoe by operatives of the Russian criminal police department and the Moscow city criminal police department. Investigators suspect her of tax evasion and fraud. An international warrant for her arrest was issued in December 2003. A court order has now been issued for her formal detention. (Itar-TASS, 26.11.2007)

November 28: Kommersant reports that the retired investigator Salavat Karimov has become active again. Read more »

The Ninth Appellate Court deferred until 5 December its examination of the appeal by PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit (the Russian subsidiary of the Pricewaterhouse Coopers) against the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court. The court had judged the contracts between the company and Yukos for carrying out audits in 2002-4 to be null and void. As journalists were told in the courtroom, the Ninth Appellate Court has insisted that the tax service present written confirmation at the next hearing that Yukos has been excluded from the state register of legal entities. (Interfax, 28.11.2007)

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December 2007

December 24: Gazprom Neft, a subsidiary of Gazprom has asked permission from the Federal Antitrust Service to buy a 50% stake in Tomskneft from oil company Rosneft. Read more »

December 26: The Moscow Arbitration Court has terminated legal proceedings connected with a lawsuit seeking to void an 80 billion ruble loan and a U.S. $350 million loan provided by Yukos Capital S.a.r.l. to the now defunct oil company Yukos. The lawsuit was filed by Eduard Rebgun, Yukos' receiver. Rebgun has argued that, under Russian law, related party deals may be voided if a creditor or a debtor incurs losses due to them. The loans were provided in 2003-2004. (Prime-TASS)

December 27: Statement for the press and the human rights community from Vasily Georgievich Alexanyan, being held at FGU IZ-77/1 of the UFSIN of Russia for the city of Moscow Read more »

The RF Supreme Court has postponed until 31 January its examination of the appeal by Alexei Pichugin, former head of security at Yukos. Pichugin was accused of organising a number of killings and attempted murders and sentenced on 6 August 2007 to life imprisonment.Read more »

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January 2008

January 15: Read the Financial Times article about Vasily Aleksanyan's health condition. Read more »

January 16:The RF Supreme Court postpones until 22 January a matter of great urgency. “The Russian authorities have brought me to a critical, deathbed condition,” announced Vasily Alexanyan at the end of last year. On Wednesday a video link with the prison enabled him to take part in a Supreme Court hearing and none who saw and heard him would describe his December statement as an exaggeration. Read more »

January 17: On Thursday in the Independent Press Centre in Moscow lawyer Yelena Lvova and human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov joined forces to save the life of Vasily Alexanyan, who is among those arrested as part of the Yukos case. Read the report about the press-conference »

January 22: On Tuesday three judges of the Russian Federation’s Supreme Court listened to the arguments of Vasily Alexanyan’s defence attorneys, heard a speech by Alexanyan himself (by video-link from prison) and a 30-second contribution from the prosecutor. After retiring to deliberate they emerged with a ruling based on information that had not been made available during the hearing and was unknown even to the defence team. Read more »

January 28: The Ninth Arbitration Appellate Court on Monday closed its hearing into the appeal by PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit (the Russian subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers) against the Moscow Arbitration Court. The auditing company was appealing against a decision that recognised its contracts with Yukos for conducting audits in 2002-2004 as invalid. As journalists were told in court the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court was now considered to have legal force. (Interfax)

January 30: Today the preliminary hearings into the case of Vasily Alexanyan are taking place in the Simonovsky district court. The numerous appeals made by the defence was a clear obstacle but they were not the ones to slow down the rapid pace of justice – at 16.15 doctors entered the courtroom, who confirmed that Vasily Alexanyan should be freed from participating in the hearings today. Read more »

January 31: The Simonovsky county court today resumed the preliminary hearings into the case of Vasily Alexanyan. Yesterday’s hearing was suspended due to the ill health of the defendant, as certified by doctors. Before the start of today’s hearing, Vasily Alexanyan was just about able to answer a few questions from journalists, though with obvious difficulty. Ahead of him was also a possibly very lengthy process. Read more »

Today the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the verdict of life sentence for Alexei Pichugin, former head of the NK Yukos security services for the organisation of series of murders and attempted murders.Read more »

Today’s preliminary hearings in the Simonovsky court failed to stop the news of Vasily Alexanyan’s new terminal illness recently discovered from leaking out.Read more »

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February 2008

February 1: Today, the Simonovsky court concluded the three-day long preliminary hearing into the case of Vasily Alexanyan. In the presence of journalists, Judge Irina Oreshkina took the decision to sentence the seriously ill Vasily Alexanyan. Read more »

February 5: Today Simonovsky court began its consideration into the case of Vasily Alexanyan, whose health condition continues to rapidly deteriorate. Read more »

February 6: Today the Simonovsky court decided to suspend proceedings into seriously ill Vasily Alexanyan’s case. The defence team’s appeal for having Vasily Alexanyan released was rejected. Another fundamental issue – about where he should be treated – was also dealt with by the court in an incomprehensible way. Read more »

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March 2008

March 5:Alexei Pichugin has been sent to a penal colony. Read more »

March 13: Alexei Pichugin has been transferred to Sol-Iletsk. Read more »

March 17: The Moscow City Court has prolonged until 16 July the detention in custody of Sergei Shimkevich, former manager of Tomskneft (Eastern Oil Company) plc. He is accused of misappropriating 6 billion roubles. Read more »

March 20: It was announced yesterday that the Cyprus Public Prosecutor's Office has refused to fulfil a request for international legal assistance relating to the charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.  This was addressed to them more than three years ago by the then Russian public prosecutor, Vladimir Ustinov.  He asked his Cypriot colleagues to assist in obtaining through a local court financial records of two of Yukos’s offshore companies in Cyprus, Dunsley Limited and Nassaubridge Management Limited.  According to the prosecution it was through these companies that money was laundered from oil misappropriated by Yukos.  Now that the Cypriot Prosecutor's Office has revoked its request to the court, the Russian Public Prosecutor’s Office is claiming there is no longer any need for the documents to be sent since the investigators have obtained them “by other means”. (Yekaterina Zapodinskaya, Kommersant, 20.03.2008)

March 27: Last material legitimate creditor of Yukos Oil Company, Moravel Investments Limited, has been paid about US$850 million by Dutch Yukos subsidiary. Yukos International UK B.V. Press release Read more »

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April 2008

April 1: The Russian Environmental Monitoring Agency, Rosprirodnadzor, reports infringements in the operations of Neftegaztekhnologiya OAO, a Russian subsidiary of Italy’s Eni. The company has failed to carry out the required amount of seismic exploration, hydrocarbon resources are not being extracted, the field has not been developed, and the company’s balance-sheet does not reflect boreholes drilled at state expense, etc., according to the report. As previously reported, Neftegaztekhnologiya was one of the assets acquired by Eni jointly with Enel (Italy) at an auction in April 2007 in connection with the bankruptcy of Yukos.  On that occasion, the Italian companies also acquired Arktikgaz OAO and Urengoil Inc. ZAO. (Interfax, 01.04.2008) 

April 3: On Thursday the Federal Arbitration Court for the District of Moscow put back to 29 April its consideration of appeals on a point of law by PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, the Russian subsidiary of US firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), against the verdict of the Moscow Arbitration Court and the Ninth Arbitration Appeals Court. Read more »

April 4: Vedomosti reports: The tax authorities skimmed 90 billion roubles too much from Yukos. Read more »

April 11: A Cypriot court has refused the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation to extradite entrepreneur Vladislav Kartashov to Russia to face charges of embezzlement in two criminal cases brought against Yukos. The court agreed with its English, Swiss, and Lithuanian counterparts who had previously refused to extradite persons involved in the case, deeming prosecution of the Yukosmanagers to be politically motivated. Read more »

April 14: The Russian Public Prosecutor’s Office has submitted to the courts yet another criminal case linked to the main “YUKOS affair”, in respect of the former director of the State Tax Inspectorate of Lesnoy (Sverdlovsk Region), Sergey Karfidov. Read more »

April 15: The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation will shortly be setting up its own enquiry into ZAO PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, the Russian sub-division of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Secretary of State and Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Shatalov announced in an interview with the Interfax-AFI Agency. Read more »

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May 2008

May 20: A Cyprus court has refused to extradite a former senior Yukos executive to Russia, saying that the case is politically-motivated. Read more »