The Presidium of the Moscow City Court has finally published its ruling on the supervisory appeal against the Khamovnichesky court’s verdict, filed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his defence team. The resolutive part of the ruling had been heard on the 20th December 2012 at the Moscow City Court. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers can now take further action.

The head of Khodorkovsky’s defence team Vadim Klyuvgant commented:

“It’s not quite clear why so much time (from 20 December to 16 January) was required to create such a judicial act, so to say. I can probably understand those who tried finding a sensation or at least a new word in it, but such hopes, if anybody had them, did not come true. We did not have such hopes.

This judgment could be assessed as the first tentative but substantial step toward fairness if Mikhail Borisovich and Platon Leonidovich were released by that decision of the Presidium of the Moscow City Court. Of course, it would not have been the final result that should be achieved and that we are seeking, but it would have been the first step toward fairness, although the only lawful and fair decision would be their immediate release plus finding them completely innocent with full exoneration. Anything else is attempts to distract attention from the substance.

However, this document opens the door to the Supreme Court for us and gives us every reason to draw the Supreme Court’s attention to the same fact which we have been telling it about all along: there is no way to get any signs of justice in this case in Moscow. The rest of what is given there under the guise of the so-called justifications and arguments is the reiteration of the same old, same old, which once again makes you think of the mutual cover-up insurmountable so far at the level of Moscow courts. That is, they simply repeat after one another, re-write it and every time call it a response to arguments of the new appeal. If there is anything new there in terms of the arithmetic, I cannot call it anything other than a simulation of consideration of our arguments on the merits; I equally cannot call it a reaction on the merits to the arguments of the Chairman of the Supreme Court, because the fact that they found a mistake worth of several billions of roubles against the background of the charges as a whole worth, if I’m not mistaken, 800 billion roubles does not, in my opinion, even require any particular comments.

Let me remind you that in May 2011, when the Moscow City Court heard our cassation appeal, it reduced the scope of the theft charges (now they reduced the scope of the legalisation charges). Notably, at that time the reduction was not by a microscopic part in the framework of the total scope of the false charges but by a third! But this did not entail any consequences in terms of the length of the sentence. Consequently, this did not entail any consequences now either, although the logic suggests (even if we disregard everything else) that if the court comes to the conclusion that the scope of the crime was one third less (or even somewhat less), it [the court] should follow the road to the end, be consistent and proportionally adjust the sentence in term of its reduction as well. But this does not happen, and this once again underscores that there is no justice and fairness here at all. And what we see here is a very old bureaucratic trick: the superiors ordered – we fulfilled; try saying that we didn’t.

So we are starting to draft a new appeal to the Supreme Court as planned. I have already said that the Supreme Court now will be unable to forward it to those against whom we appeal. And if the RF Supreme Court does not see it possible to bounce us from the start (I very much hope this will not happen), they will have to engage on the merits and respond to our arguments themselves. That’s what we’ll be seeking, that’s what we’ll expect.

 It should be emphasized that the judgment that we are now discussing is not an official version: it’s not on paper, it doesn’t have a stamp and a signature. We have yet to receive an official version. The chancellery of the Moscow City Court does not even tell us that they have sent us the document; they simply say that they don’t have the case file with that judgment yet. We will be unable to lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court until we have an official copy. For us, the decision posted on the website of the Moscow City Court is just some FYI material to start our preparatory work.”