Yukos Lawyer Jailed For Embezzlement And Tax Evasion

by Tatiana Smolenskaya, Tax-News.com, Moscow

21 April 2006

A Moscow court has sentenced a lawyer for the embattled oil company Yukos to a seven year prison term after finding her guilty of tax evasion and embezzlement, in what Russian media reports have suggested is an attempt to flush out other more senior figures wanted by the Russian authorities for their part in supposed criminal activities perpetrated whilst at the company.

Svetlana Bakhmina was arrested in connection with the investigation of alleged asset-stripping at a Yukos subsidiary in December 2004 when she was a junior lawyer at the company. She was accused of embezzling property worth a total of eight billion rubles ($300 million) belonging to Tomskneft and the Eastern Oil Company.

Prosecutors also charged Bakhmina with evading approximately 600,000 rubles in taxes, despite the fact that her lawyers say that she has paid 606,040 rubles in back taxes for 2001-2002.

Bakhmina argued that, as a junior lawyer, she was merely carrying out the instructions of senior staff.

Prosecutors requested that Bakhmina serve a nine year prison sentence - the same length as initially handed down to ex-Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his associate Platon Lebedev after they were both found guilty of tax evasion and fraud.

Bakhmina's lawyers are arguing that she should not be made to serve a prison term under an amnesty designed to protect women who have small children and are sentenced to less than 10 years in prison. Bakhmina has two young sons.

Russian newspaper Kommersant has suggested that the authorities will release Bakhmina if Dmitri Gololobov, head of the Yukos legal department, returns to Russia from London.

Several former senior Yukos employees have fled Russia since the government began its systematic persecution of the company in 2004.

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