The FSB has got involved in the Alexei Pichugin case: one of its colonels spent an hour interrogating the former YUKOS employee on July 13.

Sergei Orlov

Although Pichugin’s lawyer was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, there can be no doubt that this was yet another attempt to coerce Pichugin, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007, into testifying against Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Pichugin’s elderly mother and younger brother were recently interrogated and searched, and Pichugin himself was threatened with the arrest of his brother. The threat being treated as genuine by lawyers, Andrei Pichugin was forced to leave Russia.

Alexei Pichugin, former head of YUKOS’s internal economic security department, was arrested 13 years ago. He became the first victim of the “YUKOS affair.” A series of sham trials lasted three years. Pichugin continued to claim that he had been convicted illegally, and was guilty of no crime – an assertion he reiterated to the FSB colonel in 2016.

This isn’t the first time the FSB has involved itself in the “Pichugin case.” A month after his arrest, in fact, FSB investigators injected Pichugin with psychotropic substances and proceeded to interrogate him – for six hours straight – about YUKOS. The so-called “truth serum” administered to Alexei robs individuals of self-control and willpower as well as being extremely detrimental to their general health; its use in interrogations can be endorsed only by people whose professional biographies echo those of Stalin’s inquisitors.

By the time the questioning was over, Pichugin had been reduced to a state of virtual unconsciousness. According to his then-cellmate Igor Sutyagin, a scientist accused of espionage by the intelligence agencies, the “truth serum” had turned Pichugin into a “wooden robot:” “The whites of his eyes were yellowish-grey and cloudy, and he was incapable of focusing his gaze on anything. His arms and legs were unnaturally straight and unbending. Wholly consumed by torpor, he answered questions monosyllabically and in the lifeless voice of an automaton.”

Making his lot more and more difficult, the regime continued to “suggest” that Pichugin ought to come to his senses and secure his freedom by way of false testimony. The first explicit proposal of this kind came from investigator Alexander Bannikov in April 2004: “He said there was no point in familiarising myself with this ‘rubbish’ (the case materials), and that, as a former security official, this was something I should understand,” Pichugin recalled. “He said that no one was interested in me specifically. The case was a political one, and the real people of interest were Nevzlin, Khodorkovsky, and the oil company’s other co-owners.”

It’s noteworthy that the regime made the first of its “indecent proposals” to Pichugin only 10 months after his arrest, having initially allowed him to get a sense of the seriousness of their intentions; it would appear that they wanted Pichugin to realise what prison was really like – and to instil genuine fear into his heart. But Pichugin wasn’t afraid.

All subsequent proposals that Pichugin commit perjury were put to him at pivotal moments in the case: on the eve of his first sentencing, he was threatened with life imprisonment, and, shortly prior to the second, prosecutor Kamil Kashaev urged Pichugin to give false testimony during a break in court proceedings. If he’d capitulated at any of these junctures, his fate would have been different – but Pichugin repeatedly refused to commit perjury, and in August 2007 the Moscow City Court sentenced him to life imprisonment on the third attempt.

The intention was for Pichugin to see hell up close

On 6 March 2008, Pichugin was transferred to the notorious Black Dolphin prison; on April 23 – barely six weeks later – he was back in Moscow City Court to testify in the “Nevzlin case.” The penal processing system is a unified one, precluding the possibility that the people who dispatched Pichugin to the Black Dolphin could have been unaware of his being imminently due to return to the capital. There’s only one explanation for this little “outing:” the intention was for Pichugin to see hell up close, thus finally compelling him to give the “correct” evidence against Nevzlin. Even on this occasion, however, Pichugin didn’t waver.

It’s worth noting that, having considered the circumstances of Pichugin’s first trial, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2012 that he had been denied the right to due process of law. But the Supreme Court of Russia was having none of it, and refused to review the case. That said, you’d be hard-pressed to expect anything else – for it was the self-same Supreme Court that overturned for being “too lenient” the 24-year sentence meted out to Pichugin by Moscow City Court in 2006. 

The second “Pichugin case” consisted of several components, including those relating to the murders of businesswoman Valentina Korneyeva and Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov. As with the first case, no direct evidence to incriminate Pichugin was ever found – all charges against him were based solely on circumstantial evidence (third-party testimony and so forth). However, everyone who testified against Pichugin over the course of the investigation would go on to admit perjury.

Mikhail Ovsyannikov (murder of businesswoman Valentina Korneyeva): “My testimony against Nevzlin and Pichugin was given under pressure from the investigation,” said Ovsyannikov in Moscow City Court. Mikhail Ovsyannikov suffers from severe renal disease (one of his kidneys has in fact been removed altogether), and the investigators knew exactly what buttons to press: “Fail to cooperate with the investigation and you’ll be transferred to a common cell; two days later you’ll have kicked the bucket.” Ovsyannikov was effectively tortured by law enforcement personnel. “They would refuse to take him to the toilet during interrogations, while medical aid was conditional on his testimony,” wrote journalist Vera Vasilieva.

Vladimir Shapiro (murder of Korneyeva): In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Shapiro said that investigators promised him “manna from heaven” if he slandered Pichugin and Nevzlin. Later, during the in absentia trial of Nevzlin, Shapiro was asked by his lawyer whether he had been promised a shorter prison term in return for slandering Pichugin and Nevzlin. “I don’t want to be killed,” Shapiro replied.

“I slandered Pichugin and Nevzlin at the behest of General Prosecutor’s Office investigators”

Gennady Tsygelnik (murder of Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov): “I slandered Pichugin and Nevzlin at the behest of General Prosecutor’s Office investigators Burtovoy, Bannikov, Zhebryakov and operational officer Smirnov. I made a deal with Burtovoy on May 4, 2005. I was promised protection and a minimal prison term, but given a maximum one.”

Evgeny Reshetnikov (murder of Petukhov): According to Reshetnikov, investigator Burtovoy asserted that Leonid Nevzlin and Alexey Pichugin had ordered the crimes before urging that “truthful testimony” be given. 

All these revelations were ignored by the judges.

Unproven guilt is equivalent to proven innocence. Even if you know nothing about Pichugin or the circumstances of Petukhov’s murder, the methods deployed by the Russian regime to convict Pichugin speak volumes in their own right. When the goal of an investigation is objective justice, witnesses are not intimidated, the results of expert evaluations are not misrepresented, and “truth serums” are most certainly not involved at any stage of the proceedings. Fair trials preclude jury manipulation and disparaging attitudes to arguments for the defence; nor do they bar the media from the courtroom.

Alexei Pichugin enjoys the backing of the European Court of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which has been dealing with Russia’s failure to comply with the ruling of the ECHR. The Kremlin, however, has exploited the legal despotism endemic to contemporary Russia, its persecution of Pichugin fuelled by a hatred of all things YUKOS-related, and by an unyielding determination to break the will of this indomitable man.

If the West truly wants to understand the “anything goes” lawlessness of the Putin regime, it cannot forget about Alexey Pichugin. For the Pichugin case is the clearest demonstration yet that “anything goes” really does mean “anything goes.”