Sergey Guriev: “The Judiciary in Russia is Dependent and Incompetent”

August 14, 2013
Sergei Guriev

On August 6, following Khodorkovsky’s Supreme Court appeal hearing, Tikhon Dzyadko and Lika Kremer of Russian TV channel Rain, interviewed Sergey Guriev, former rector of the New Economic School in Moscow and one of the experts consulted in the 2011 report by the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, which examined Khodorkovsky’s second trial.

Speculation around a third Khodorkovsky case intensified earlier this summer when it became known that the Investigative Committee had summoned experts, including Guriev, involved in the Council’s inquiry, which prompted him to flee Russia for France.

A video of the interview in Russian, along with a Russian transcript, can be viewed here. An English translation is below:

Dzyadko: Mikhail Khodorkovsky said in his statement to Russia’s Supreme Court today that the second court trial and the verdict in the second ‘Yukos case’ were untenable and conflicting. You were a member of the team of experts who analysed the case. Looking at the analysis you had conducted and the analysis Khodorkovsky presented in his half-hour speech today, how can you explain the position the Supreme Court took in spite of all the arguments?

Guriev: I cannot explain it. From a rational perspective one cannot agree that the verdict is based on law. The verdict fails to adduce any evidence of Khodorkovsky’s or Lebedev’s guilt. I am talking about the second case now, which I reviewed, which I read hundreds of pages of. They all are in the public domain. Anyone can get conversant with them and understand that the verdict is absolutely unlawful.

Kremer: Were the words said today at the Supreme Court unexpected or not for you?

Guriev: No, they were not unexpected for me. I think the days in question are the most important thing. Because the Supreme Court adjudged that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had to spend ten years and ten months in prison each. This means it would be impossible to hold them liable for the third time, in a third case, for the actions they had carried out back before they were detained. There is a ten-year statute of limitations in Russia; this means that, if there is a third case, it will concern some actions which will be imputed to them during their term in prison. Of course, that would be a very surrealistic picture, but, frankly speaking, what I saw in the second case and, for that matter, in some other high-profile cases in Russia proves that the judiciary in Russia is dependent and incompetent today.

Dzyadko: Would you not be surprised if a third case emerged, in a format which might be difficult to imagine now?

Guriev: Frankly speaking, I believe law enforcement officers are working on the third case at present. I am still bound by a written non-disclosure pledge, so I cannot tell you what I know from my examination file. But we have been reading in the mass media that a whole team of investigators have been working on the third case. They are the same investigators who worked on the second case, and on the first case. There was no Investigative Committee back then, but those people have moved to the Investigative Committee now. Many of them have been promoted but they keep working on the case. It is not up to the Investigative Committee to decide whether the case gets into court and exactly what verdict the court will issue. The decision will probably depend on many things. But at the very least the third case will be endlessly absurd because it will be based on an assumption that, while in the colony, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev violated law, guided some gang. That is difficult to imagine but the level of absurdity I saw even in my examination file, my court judgments file, not to mention other high-profile cases, suggests that anything can be expected.

Kremer: Do you think it is possible that the third case will not affect Khodorkovsky and Lebedev because they were in the colony, but will instead affect those who were at large all this time, those who sort of helped them?

Guriev: That is quite possible, then the case should not been called the “third case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev,” but it should be called the case against Khodorkovsky’s and Lebedev’s accomplices, the so-called experts who allegedly operate under the umbrella of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council. I think that is a possibility. In Russia, I do not rule out any level of lawlessness on the part of the Investigative Committee and the judiciary, but then it will be called differently. It will not be the third case against Khodorkovsky.

Kremer: It could be “the third Yukos case” because it is against former staff.

Guriev: It could concern former Yukos staff, money initially stolen on counts in case No. 184103. Mind you, the case was initiated back in 2003; it engendered all the counts Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are in prison on today, and the counts other Yukos employees were in prison on. Maybe the case against experts, human rights advocates, researchers will be a part of case No. 184103, of the evergreen case Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are in prison for today. But that could hardly be called the case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. In my view, Khodorkovsky is still a huge problem for today’s authorities. Many actions the authorities take today by violating law, by issuing overtly unjust decisions are because some members of the authorities do not want to see Khodorkovsky and Lebedev at large.

Dzyadko: You have been observing yet another stage in the Yukos affair from outside of our home country; it is probably easier for you to assess the response by the West to the Yukos affair. How active is the response? To what extent is the affair followed? Or has the initially high interest waned gradually and the Yukos affair is a domestic Russian issue?

Guriev: It is not a domestic Russian issue. As far as I understand, Yukos shareholders are still in litigation with the Russian state over some assets in various countries. Western public opinion is no longer surprised and believes that Khodorkovsky, no matter what he was in the 1990s, is a political prisoner today and that Russia’s judiciary is a tool for political repression. Today, one cannot go out, talk to intellectuals, politicians, businessmen in the West and say, “You know, all is not that simple in the ‘second Yukos case’ or the third one under preparation.” It is my opinion that it is difficult to find a reasonable person in the West today who would not respond to this. It is a political affair, and every effort by the law enforcement system in that affair aims to make sure Khodorkovsky is not released. The same concerns other high-profile cases. The West does not perceive Russia’s judiciary as a body related to justice.