The Swiss court will not give Russia bank documents related to Yukos case.

The decision of the Swiss authorities to refuse to cooperate with Russia in the Yukos case may lead to a lifting of the freeze on Yukos foreign assets, Reuters news agency reports, citing the Swiss chief prosecutor’s office. Previously, the Lausanne-based court had ruled to delay delivery of documents related to the former oil giant. This is the first time a country has refused to provide legal assistance at a state’s request. The Swiss court ruled that Yukos top executives were persecuted “for clearly political motives”.

Thus, the court accepted the appeals lodged by six plaintiffs, including Yukos’ main owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the former head of the Menatep Group,Platon Lebedev, to stop the Swiss attorney general from sharing information with Moscow.

Moscow had no official comment on the move.

All the evidence clearly shows that the criminal cases filed in Moscow serve the interests of the powers that be in Russia, according to the ruling of the Federal Tribunal. This ruling cannot be challenged, the Swiss Supreme Court points out. “The political and discriminatory nature of the judicial proceedings in Russia is characterized by violations of human rights and of the right to defence that occurred (in the course of the Yukos case),” the final ruling states.

According to the Swiss judges, the Russian authorities aim to “call on the wealthy oligarchy to obey and to isolate them as declared and potential adversaries”.

Earlier, Moscow had appealed to the Swiss authorities to transfer to Russia the documents related to the companies and the banks linked with Yukos. The Russian authorities claimed that Yukos and its subsidiaries had carried out illegal transactions through Swiss-based banks and companies.

How Yukos Swiss money was frozen

Switzerland had already blocked the transfer of documents on the Yukos case to Russia at the beginning of January 2006, but the grounds it gave then for its decision were softer. The judges had found that “the actions of the Russian government were not confined to a mere persecution of a criminal offence” and that the Swiss justice bodies should not collaborate with such practice. Delivering a decision in the appeal lodged by lawyer Bruneay des Pres, the five judges stressed that the case was of “a clearly special situation” and “of great complexity due to a number of faults and violations involving considerable amounts of money”.

Next, the court blocked the transfer to Russian prosecutors of documents concerning the companies and banks linked with Yukos and obliged the Swiss Prosecutor’s office to carry out an additional investigation into the alleged criminal origin of the money in the accounts.

Meanwhile, tens of millions of dollars tied to Yukos remain frozen in Swiss bank accounts at the request of the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s office under the legal action.

Switzerland’s participation in the Yukos case dates back to March 2004, when the Swiss Prosecutor’s Office, after receiving a request from the Prosecutor General’s office in Russia, carried out searches and seized documents in various cantons – Zurich, Geneva, Schwyz and Fribourg, Gazeta online reports. The assets held by some shareholders of Yukos, Group Menatep and companies affiliated with them were frozen in Swiss banks. However, in June 2004 the Swiss Federal Court satisfied several appeals filed by Yukos lawyers and ended the freeze on some accounts estimated to be worth over $4 billion.

Khodorkovsky’s lawyer: this is an unprecedented ruling

Philippe Neyroud, Khodorkovsky’s and Lebedev’s Swiss lawyer said the ruling by the Lausanne-based court was unprecedented. “For the first time, with the exception of extradition requests, Switzerland has rejected legal assistance to a state on the grounds of violations of human rights,” Neyroud told the AFP news agency.

In 2004, the Federal Court ruled that the freeze of over $1.5 billion of Yukos assets blocked in Swiss banks at the request if the Russian side should be lifted. Meanwhile, a further $166 million in shares held by the former oil company remain frozen.

“The decision delivered by the Federal Tribunal only concerned the transmission of documents. We still have to examine the question of ending the freeze on assets still frozen,” said Maria Schnebli, a federal prosecutor in the Attorney General’s Office.

(Newsru.com, 24.08.2007)