For former Russian oil tycoon,
Khodorkovsky, a preordained guilty verdict
ERIC REGULY
ROME— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published
For former Russian oil tycoon,
Khodorkovsky, a preordained guilty verdict
ERIC REGULY
ROME— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published
Last updated
Mikhail Khodorkovsky believed from the outset of his latest courtroom
drama that he was doomed, that the trial was rigged by political forces
sympathetic to Vladimir Putin and that he would remain locked in a
frozen Siberian labour prison.
In April the former oil tycoon – once Russia’s richest man – slammed
the Russian judicial system. “I consider this case political and
corrupt, orchestrated by my opponents to prevent me from walking free,”
he said from his courtroom glass cage.
On Friday, only three days before a Moscow judge read the verdict, he lashed
out at Mr. Putin himself. The Russian president-turned-prime minister leads a
cynical government that is indifferent to the Russian people, Mr. Khodorkovsky
said in a newspaper article. He called Mr. Putin “horribly lonely in the face of
a vast and unsympathetic country.”
Mr. Khodorkovsky, who evidently felt he had nothing to lose by criticizing
Mr. Putin, was right about the verdict. On Monday he and his former business
partner, Platon Lebedev, were found guilty of embezzlement and money laundering
in a case that has triggered condemnation from the United States, Britain,
Germany and other countries. “He very well knew his fate was sealed long before
the verdict,” Robert Amsterdam, the Canadian lawyer who is Mr. Khodorkosky’s
former legal counsellor, said Monday night. “The charges against him were
embarrassing, absurd.”
The duo were already serving eight-year sentences for fraud and tax evasion
under a 2005 conviction, and Mr. Khodorkovsky, 47, was due for early release in
late 2011. His defence team said the fresh convictions, which are to be
appealed, mean he will probably spend another six years in prison.
Mr. Khodorkovsky is the former head of Yukos Oil, which was Russia’s biggest
oil producer and exporter before it was crushed by the equivalent of $30-billion
in tax claims and sold off in pieces after his arrest in 2003, when Mr. Putin
was president (he became Prime Minister in 2008). Monday’s court decision found
Mr. Khodorkovsky guilty of stealing $27-billion worth of oil, equivalent to all
of the oil Yukos produced between 1998 and 2003.
The size of the theft defies logic and staggers the imagination, Mr.
Khodorkovsky’s many supporters said. German Gref, who was Russia’s economy
minister when the oligarch was arrested in 2003, testified at the trial that he
would have noticed if that much oil wealth had gone missing.
“The trial was a charade of justice, the charges were absolutely false, but I
fear the sentencing will be very real,” Vadim Klyuvgant, the lead defence
lawyer, said in a statement after the verdict was read. “There isn’t the
slightest doubt that there was pressure on the court.”
The supporters of Mr. Khodorkovsky say he is being punished for having the
temerity to challenge the authority and integrity of the Kremlin during his
years as Yukos’s chief. “Khodorkovsky’s mistake was mixing politics with
business,” said a Russian businessman who invests money for wealthy Russian
investors. “There were rumours that he wanted to become prime minister. You
don’t do that sort of thing in Russia, and never when Putin is in charge.”
There is not doubt that Mr. Putin, unlike current Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev, took a personal interest in the Khodorkovsky case. About a year ago,
Mr. Putin compared him to the infamous American mobster Al Capone. A week before
Christmas, Mr. Putin was at it again, suggesting on a televised phone-in show
that he had little doubt the fallen oligarch would be found guilty and that “a
thief should sit in jail.” Noting that Yukos’s former security chief had been
convicted of murder, he even suggested that Mr. Khodorkovsky had blood on his
hands.
Putin is a unique personality. He reflects the patriotic history of Russia in
that he acts like an FSB appointed Czar, his grooming starting at an early age
when he became an ideal adolescent prospect for state process and grooming.
He denies, totally denies the existence of his mother, Vera Putin who lives in
Georgia and whose eyes, are eerily, the same as Valdemar Putin. At the same
time, Putin's childhood history shows remarkable blanks while his family, living
distant cousins etc, that is, Putin's version, are blank except for one that
holds a state appointment.
Khordorkovsky literally plundered the most valuable of the state owned
resources, oil resources that left a very bad bitter taste in most of the
establishment who were looking for excuses as to how and when to put him out of
action.
His demise came after publicly indicated his desire to replace Putin, not
exactly a smart decision and the outcome was predictable. Khodorkovsky now
serves as a political punching bag, his incarceration makes the government look
tough and deals with the embarrassment of having the majority of state assets
end up in the hands of a few while a significant percentage live in abject
poverty and the rest of the country at the hands of corrupt officials, criminals
who blend in and collaborate with officials to the extent that its impossible to
see where government ends and criminal organizations begin.
Canada is probably worse. In Canada, the state assets, the national income, is
to a vast extent, extorted by the "Legal Cartel", just as Putin can appoint his
red head set of legs to a top political appointment, Canada appoints senators
and JUDGES who are now largely politically appointed.
Sheila Copps is widely recognized as being responsible for the appointment of
Ottawa Judge of the Superior Court of Justice, Madam Justice Cheryl Robertson,
who carries out injustice on men, with an addiction akin to a unfixed dog's
habit of peeing on every tree or area where it smells where another dog peed.
Her gall staggers even feminist lawyers who left with jaws hanging and eyes
popping when she flippantly puts more men into Ontario's concentration camps for
men who simply wanted to have access.
Then there is the queen fem box of Ottawa Madam Justice Desousa, a bitter
divorced woman whose takes out her seething hatred of the male gender and self
represented litigants as though she was a terrorist brainwashed in religious
school.
Our judges go through a process akin to that of the Madrases of Pakistan, with
education on how to "control the courtroom", that is, how to look good while
engaging in endless injustice and corrupt decisions to support the Legal Cartel,
that is by severely penalizing anyone who can't afford a lawyer and represents
themselves.
It's not just the mad man haters who Economically Rape Canada, there are a host
of silent unwritten rules, a code of silence, of the judiciary, akin to those of
the Hells Angels or other criminal organizations on how to transfer wealth and
absolute power to the female gender while costing the Canadian economy several
hundred billion dollars that makes Khodorkovsky look like a petty thief.
What is staggering, is that unlike Russia, Canada has NO police for our
corrupt judiciary who act with total immunity and impunity while flagrantly
abusing their judicial discretion and fiduciary , not to mention public duties.
We have a lot of two faced journalism in the west which ignores, totally
ignores the plundering of our economy, the ponzy scheme creators, the judges how
dispense billions of dollars in what is called costs.
Over the years, the Ontario Judiciary has increasingly adopted an "official
rule" that costs be paid at each stage of the litigation by the successful
party.
What is not disclosed is that those who are driven to bankruptcy after having
all their money extorted by the legal cartel, end up representing themselves and
are NOT entitled to equivalent costs.
That effectively means that the Judiciary can bankrupt anyone who chooses a
lawyer they don't like and then economically destroy them regardless of the
merits or the law.
The hatred by Canada's judiciary, its corrupt financial support of the Legal
Cartel, is hundreds of billions of dollars that NO ONE wishes to mention is a
national problem, a Canadian economic cancer and those who operate it make
Khodorkovsky or Madof pale into insignificance.
