The Russian General Prosecutor's office has ordered searches and seizures of any documents related to YUKOS held by other companies. For the past three days the searches have been executed in the private business park Zhukovka-88. The targets of the federal tax police raids included Investment Bank Trust, National Bank Trust, Law Firm ALM-Feldmans, YUKOS-FBC, LLC, and the Open Russia Fund. Searches were conducted even at the Belgium-based YUKOS Finance B.V. Now the Russian government is going after Mikhail Khodorkovsky's former legal team.
The most ruthless search sacked the offices of the Open Russia Fund, which was surrounded by a SWAT team armed with machine guns. Open Russia is a non-profit organization that supports many social causes around the nation, and works as one of Russia's few pro-free market, pro-rule of law think-tanks. Open Russia's recent projects include articles on Russian corruption, the construction of a museum for the blind in Samara, financing a homeless children's shelter in Barnaul, etc.
In the past few months several regional representatives and program officers of the Fund were compelled to testify as witnesses on the YUKOS case. On the last day of the search, Russian prosecutors hauled out of Open Russia's offices every single paper document and all of their computer servers.
All this should not impact the Fund's charitable work, because many of these projects are based in Russia's remote regions. However, it's impossible for the Fund to plan for any future projects in the mean time. What surprises sane people is the magnitude of the search, considering the fact that in the past year the Fund has already been searched twenty times by the Tax Ministry, Border Police, Russian Interior Ministry, the General Prosecutors office, etc. They haven't found anything "incriminating" yet, we'll see if they find anything this time.
For a parallel, imagine if the Bush Administration didn't like the work done by the American Civil Liberties Union and decided to order constant searches of their offices by the FBI, IRS, and ATF while ransacking their papers, humiliating their staff, and halting their work for months.
After the searches were conducted of the law firms representing Khodorkovsky, the Russian Federal Registration Agency went after the lawyers themselves, trying to revoke their licenses to practice law. Shmidt, Drel, Dyatlev, and Levina are facing disbarrment, while Olga Artuhove, in order not get prosecuted for doing her job, gave up her law license voluntarily on October 5, 2005.
While the goverment intimidates even potential political opponents, Moscow remains the most expensive European city to live in, according to Cushman, Wakefield, Healey and Baker Moscow took 28th place out of 30 cities surveyed as a place to do you business in Europe. It's a real shame, that a city with incredible human potential, an enormous population approaching 20,000,000, is dragging behind many other ex-Communist Bloc cities. In spite of rising oil prices, last year saw a 20% decrease in investments into the Russian oil market, thanks to the YUKOS power play. Former government economics advisor Illarionov said that no obstacle to investment looms larger than the collapse of the court system of Russia, which has become a mockery of justice. The Russian writer Vasiliy Aksenov compares the thuggish government searches at Open Russia Fund with vultures circling a helpless victim, waiting to feast on the carcass. It seems like putting Khodorkovsky in jail was not enough, more insult has to be piled onto injury. Aksenov asks, "Why do they need to humiliate people that much, if they have already killed the victim?" Russia's financial and economical system is based on double, even triple, standards. Just accept it, draw the line and move along.
Source:
Gazeta.Ru
