Jailed Russian tycoon says state withholding crucial evidence

MOSCOW – Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky accused Russian prosecutors yesterday of withholding evidence exonerating him of new charges that could keep him in prison for decades.

Khodorkovsky – once Russia’s richest man – is charged with embezzling more than US$25 billion worth of oil from subsidiaries of his former oil company, Yukos, and laundering most of the proceeds.He is serving an eight-year sentence following a 2005 fraud and tax evasion conviction – and the cases are seen as both part of a Kremlin push to punish him for challenging then-President Vladimir Putin and an effort to strengthen the state’s grip on energy resources.Khodorkovsky and business partner Platon Lebedev, also serving eight years on the same charges, face up to 22 more years in prison if convicted on the new charges.Khodorkovsky said yesterday that prosecutors are hiding documents that prove the allegedly stolen oil was legally transferred. He said his defensive strategy hinges on external audits and customs declarations that show the oil in question was delivered to a state pipeline company.’This naturally excludes the possibility of theft,’ Khodorkovsky said. Other than those documents, ‘I don’t need anything else whatsoever to defend myself,’ he said.Khodorkovsky’s lawyers say many of those documents were used as evidence against him in his first trial.State prosecutor Valery Lakhtin dismissed allegations of deliberately withholding documents crucial to the defence, saying only that other evidence would be introduced later in the trial.Judge Viktor Danilkin refused a defence motion to suspend the case until the documents are produced, but vowed to send a request to the General Prosecutor’s Office that they be presented.Khodorkovsky’s second trial has run almost seven months. Yesterday, the prosecution called its first witness – one of Lebedev’s former business associates. -Nampa-AP