The Khodorkovsky Case: Putin's Men Go to Court

In today's Russia, the political elites that surround Prime Minister Vladimir Putin exist in a kind of stratosphere. They can be seen on television, flitting in and out of the golden rooms of the Kremlin, or sitting on a stage before a sea of suits in places like Doha and Dubai. Once in a while they will deign to appear for the press. But they do not mingle with the common folk. So it was astonishing to much of the Russian public, and in fact unprecedented, when two men from Putin's circle — one a minister in his government — appeared this week, awaiting to give testimony, sitting alongside frumpy old ladies and pimply reporters in the courtroom where Mikhail Khodorkovsky is standing trial.

Khodorkovsky, of course, is also not your typical man on the street. He used to sit at the same tables with Putin, and his oil empire was once the largest in Russia, putting him at the top of the clique of oligarchs who effectively ran the country before Putin consolidated power over the past decade. But in 2003, soon after Khodorkovsky's first attempts to challenge and embarrass Putin in the arena of politics, his jet was raided by special forces, guns drawn, on the tarmac of a Siberian airport. He was arrested, becoming an example to the other oligarchs. He has not been out of government custody since.

The sentence handed to Khodorkovsky for tax evasion in 2005 will keep him behind bars until 2011 at the latest. But Russian prosecutors want him in prison longer. As his release date approached last year, he was moved from the Siberian labor camp where he had served most of his sentence and put on trial again, this time on charges of stealing an incredible 350 million tons of oil — roughly one year's worth of Russia's entire output — from his own oil company. His lawyers argue that their client would not have been stupid enough to attempt such a crime; apart from that, it is physically impossible to carry out. Still, if Khodorkovsky is convicted, the 46-year-old faces another 22 years in prison.

He has some ammunition to fight the charges. Although his oil company has been dismantled and most of its assets auctioned off to firms controlled by the state, Khodorkovsky can still afford some of the best lawyers in the business. In preparing for the new trial, one of the first things they did was draw up a list of witnesses that included Putin as well as about 20 of the most senior officials beneath Putin. This put the government and the court in an awkward spot. If they ignored the list entirely, it would be seen as supporting the notion that these men are above the law, that the court is biased and that the trial against Khodorkovsky is a mere formality, a farce. On the other hand, if they showed up to testify, they would face humiliating questions from the defense, questions that could reveal the ugly politics behind the case.

"So they offered a compromise," says Konstantin Rivkin, the attorney who led the defense this week. "They decided to give us two out of 20." The first was German Gref, chairman of Russia's largest bank and a former Economy Minister under Putin. Gref showed up on Monday to give testimony at the dingy old Soviet courthouse. There were so many spectators there to see him that TVs were set up in the bailiffs' lunchroom to broadcast the proceedings, which everyone struggled to hear over the hum of the microwave. In the room, a sense of awe could be felt, especially when Gref was asked to state his name, address and profession for the court, a ritual that suddenly seemed to make him more human than untouchable. The audience practically squirmed with amusement.

Then, at the crucial point in the three hours of questioning, which Khodorkovsky conducted himself from the transparent cage that defendants occupy in Russian courtrooms, Gref stated, "If embezzlement had been discovered, I would have been made aware of it." This was an essential point for the defense, which has argued that if so much oil had gone missing, a huge hole would have appeared in the federal budget and officials like Gref would surely have noticed it at the time. The prosecution made no attempt to discredit this statement, and Gref, who had been pleasant toward Khodorkovsky, quit the courthouse in something of a hurry, leaving his spectacles on the witness stand.

The following day, Putin's Minister of Industry and Trade, Viktor Khristenko, came to testify, and he was far less obliging. Unlike Gref, he has never shown any liberal inclinations and is seen as far closer to Putin (Khristenko's wife is also a minister in the government). During much of the questioning, Khristenko smirked at Khodorkovsky's cage, a glass box his lawyers call "the aquarium," and on several occasions, he even criticized the work of energy firms like Khodorkovsky's for "jacking up" prices and "pumping profits" out of the country. Khodorkovsky pointed out that these were not the crimes he stands accused of, and in the end, he got what he wanted from the witness. When asked whether he had ever been aware of millions of barrels of oil being stolen through Russia's pipeline monopoly, where Khristenko had served as a board member at the time, the minister mumbled that he was not aware of any such thing.

Outside the courthouse, Khodorkovsky's lawyer Rivkin called both rounds of testimony a victory for the defense. But he is far from certain they will lead to an acquittal. "The prosecutor will argue that this does not prove anything, and we will argue that it does. The debate will continue." Yet for the Russian judicial system, he says, this was a bright spot on a very dark landscape. "It sends a signal to the public that courts have to be respected, even by the political elites." So as Russia continues trying to shed its image as a land where the law is applied selectively, this week's hearings will likely mark a step forward, albeit a meager one. But Putin, of course, will still never show up to testify (Rivkin says the Prime Minister has already declined four requests), and going forward, the far more important test for the courts will come when the judge hearing this case decides whether Khodorkovsky can finally go free.