Page "Mikhail Khodorkovsky" Paragraph 49

" The Yukos affair epitomises this authoritarian abuse of the system.

I wish to recall here the excellent work done by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, in her two reports on this subject.

I do not intend to comment on the ins and outs of this case which saw Yukos, a privately owned oil company, made bankrupt and broken up for the benefit of the state owned company Rosneft.

The assets were bought at auction by a rather obscure financial group, Baikalfinansgroup, for almost € 7 billion.

It is still not known who is behind this financial group.

A number of experts believe that the state-owned company Gazprom had a hand in the matter.

The former heads of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, were sentenced to eight years ' imprisonment for fraud and tax evasion.

Vasiliy Aleksanyan, former vice-chairman of the company, who is suffering from Aids, was released on bail in January 2009 after being held in inhuman conditions condemned by the European Court of Human Rights. 3 Lastly, Svetlana Bakhmina, deputy head of Yukos's legal department, who was sentenced in 2005 to six and a half years ' imprisonment for tax fraud, saw her application for early release turned down in October 2008, even though she had served half of her sentence, had expressed " remorse " and was seven months pregnant.

Thanks to the support of thousands of people around the world and the personal intervention of the United States President, George W. Bush, she was released in April 2009 after giving birth to a girl on 28 November 2008.