The original version of this report appeared today on Lenta.ru and can be read in Russian here

Members of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council have said their colleagues who prepared a report on the second case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev have been subjected to persecution, reports Interfax. The report quotes Tamara Morshchakova, a member of the Council and a former Justice of Russia’s Constitutional Court. At a press conference in Moscow on February 6, Morshchakova stated that, “At least two of the experts have already been subjected to different kinds of persecution: one at his work, and the other in criminal proceedings.” Morshchakova added that several of the experts have been subjected to searches.

She said that investigators from the Russian law enforcement authorities allege that the Centre for Legal and Economic Studies, while doing work in the sphere of law, “pursued a far-reaching goal of preparing public expert examinations in order to exert unlawful influence on procedures of administration of justice”.

“This accusation is crazy and far-fetched,” said Morshchakova, “especially because the Centre never conducted any expert examinations; it publishes monographs.” At the same time, she added, “such an attitude jeopardises the activity of the Human Rights Council regarding analysis and discussion of the situation and working out recommendations in general.”

The second Khodorkovsky and Lebedev case concerned the theft of oil and the laundering of the criminal proceeds. A guilty verdict was issued on 27 December 2010. Together with the verdict in the first case, the former Yukos executives were sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Later, the sentence was reduced to thirteen years.

The report of the Presidential Human Rights Council was published on 21 December 2011. The experts concluded that “the actions of the convicts do not constitute either embezzlement or misappropriation.” In view of this, the Council called for the review of the guilty verdict. The report was sent, inter alia, to the then-President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev. The head of the Moscow City Court, Olga Yegorova, refused to accept the conclusions of the Council’s experts.

Click here to read a full English translation of the Presidential Human Rights Council’s report on the Khodorkovsky trial.