The New York Times: Bosses Pressed Russian Judge, Official Says

MOSCOW — The judge in last year’s politically charged trial of the former oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky openly admitted that the verdict would be dictated to him by his superiors, a former court official charged in an interview published on Friday.

“He spoke this way about the trial: ‘I basically don’t decide this. As they say, that’s how it will be,’ ” the former official, Igor Kravchenko, said of Judge Viktor N. Danilkin in an interview with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which is often critical of the Russian government.

The interview was one of two challenges that emerged Friday regarding Mr. Khodorkovsky’s second trial, which was seen by many as a test of whether Russian courts could function free of political influence.

Mr. Khodorkovsky was openly defying Vladimir V. Putin, then the president and now the prime minister, when he was arrested on tax charges in 2003; while in prison he fashioned himself into a potent critic of the government. He was convicted of tax fraud in 2005, but with his release approaching, prosecutors announced a new case against him last year, this time for embezzlement. Judge Danilkin found him guilty in December and handed down a new sentence that would keep Mr. Khodorkovsky in prison until 2017.

But Russia’s Supreme Court sided with Mr. Khodorkovsky’s defense team on an appeal, ruling that he had been held illegally for months before his second trial, despite new legislation that allowed people accused of economic crimes to be free until trial.

The legislation was a major reform passed by President Dmitri A. Medvedev after another high-profile case, the death in detention of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer arrested after accusing police investigators of tax fraud.

The unusual victory for Mr. Khodorkovsky’s defense had no practical effect, since he is already serving his second sentence.

Mr. Kravchenko is the second court worker to discuss official interference with the Khodorkovsky trial. In February, a former court assistant, Natalya Vasilyeva, said senior officials had put persistent pressure on Judge Danilkin during the course of the trial.

Judge Danilkin said it was not true, and a spokeswoman for the Moscow City Court repeated that on Friday.

“Viktor Danilkin has already made a statement that he personally wrote the verdict,” the spokeswoman, Anna Usacheva, told the Ria Novosti news service. She appealed to journalists not to “suck news out of your finger, but analyze the process on the basis of facts and data which were presented in the trial.”

Mr. Kravchenko was fired last May after he allowed Mr. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers to carry a jar of crude oil into the courtroom as part of their testimony. He said he was compelled to speak out in defense of his former co-worker.

“Vasilyeva’s interview was the truth,” Mr. Kravchenko said. “She didn’t say anything that wasn’t well known to everyone.”

Mr. Kravchenko said that during the trial, Judge Danilkin was frequently summoned to the Moscow City Court for impromptu meetings, and that the judge was clearly exasperated by the demands of senior officials. He said Judge Danilkin had been reluctant to hear the Khodorkovsky case, but had no choice because a series of judges senior to him had already refused it.

He said when senior officials were pleased with the judge, their approval translated into bonuses for him and his employees, and when they were dissatisfied, his budget shrank.

Source: The New York Times, Bosses Pressed Russian Judge, Official Says, April 15, 2011