Alexey Pichugin, YUKOS’s former security chief, has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for organizing a series of murders and two attempted murders.
Photo: Grigoriy Sobchenko
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YUKOS Employee Gets 24 Years in Murders
Verdict
The Moscow City Court has sentenced yesterday YUKOS’s former security chief to 24 years in prison for organizing a series of murders and two attempted murders. Prosecutors initially asked for life sentence for Alexey Pichugin. The verdict mentions that Pichugin carried out orders of YUKOS’s major shareholder, Leonid Nevzlin. Nevzlin’s lawyer believes that the Pichugin trial was organized to have his client extradited.
The court room where the trial had been going for the last four month was overcrowded. Three dozens of relatives of the accused, journalists and the victim, businessman Evgeny Rybin had to stand in sweltering heat for six hours while Judge Vladimir Usov was monotonously reading out the verdict. The air conditioner in the room did not work, and windows were close as a security measure.
First, the judge reminded the essence of the case and gave a short summary of the indictment. According to investigators, Alexey Pichugin organized all the crimes imputed to him, following orders of YUKOS’s major shareholder, Leonid Nevzlin who oversaw the security department where Pichugin worked. The first murder was committed on January 21, 1998. Shortly before it, Nevzlin requested Alexey Pichugin to settle a dispute with Valentina Korneeva, owner of the Tea shop, who declined to sell the office that YUKOS wanted to occupy. Alexey Pichugin went to his friend Sergey Gorin (Pichugin was convicted of his murder last year). The man received $5,000 and a Huydai Galloper jeep to find killers-for-hire, unemployed Mikhail Ovsyannikov and former police officer Vladimir Shapiro. Shapiro and Gorin drank a bottle of vodka and shot the shop owner, according to investigators.
In summer 1998, Alexey Pichugin carried out Leonid Nevzlin’s order and found men through Gorin, Shapiro and Volgograd’s gangster Arkady Goritovsky (killed in 2002) to murder Nefteyugansk Mayor Vladimir Petukhov. The mayor demanded that YUKOS pay taxes to the local budget in full. Former paratrooper Evgeny Reshetnikov and convicted criminal Gennady Tsigelnik agreed to execute the order for $10,000. On June 26, 1998, Reshetnikov shot the mayor dead with a machine gun, wounding his security man. Some time later, Tsigelnik and Reshetnikov were hired to assault Vladimir Kolesov, a business manager of Rosprom, investigators say. The manager was severely beaten up as “his career achievements ran against Nevzlin’s interests”. In fall 1998 and spring 1999, Reshetnikov and Tsigelnik made two murder attempts on Evgeny Rybin, executive at East petroleum handelgas GmbH. The businessman wanted YUKOS to return $100 million that his company had invested in the development of the Zapodno-Poludennoye and Krapivinskoye oil fields. In the first attempt, the killer missed. Later, the killers threw a bomb and fired on the car where only Rybin’s bodyguards were riding in. The driver died and two security men were injured.
After the judge finished describing the crimes imputed to the defendants, he looked into each episode, evaluated evidence and objections of the defense and pronounced the verdict.
The accused were ruled guilty and sentenced to terms in prison camps. Vladimir Shapiro got 19 years. Tsegelnik and Reshetnikov will have to serve 18 and 17 years, respectively. Mikhail Ovsyannikov was sentenced to 10 years. Vladislav Levin who took no part in YUKOS’s business but committed a robbery with Tsigelnik is to spend 7 years and a half behind bars. Alexey Pichugin got the most unexpected conviction as the state prosecutor had asked for life sentence for the key accused. The judge sentenced the former KGB major to 21 years in prison. However, considering the former YUKOS employee got a 20-year term for organizing other murders, the court decided, “by means of partial addition”, that Pichugin must spend the total of 24 years behind bars. It means that the new verdict carried only 4 years.
Pichugin’s lawyer, Georgy Kaganer told Kommersant that this fact proves the innocence of his client. “Investigators did not mention a single solid argument that could prove that Alexey Pichugin has any connection to the crimes,” the lawyer said. “The whole prosecution was based on testimonies of murderers and rapists from gangs of Korovnikov, Reshetnikov and Tsigenlnik, who had been sentenced to long prison terms,” Kaganer explained. “All of them allegedly learnt the names of the people who allegedly contracted them for murders not directly, but from Gorin who went missing and Goritvosky who was killed.” Lawyer Kaganer pointed out to the fact that witnesses of the prosecution changed their testimonies for several times. “It is already impossible to understand what they told was truth.” The lawyer noted that the only “guilt” of Pichugin is that he worked for YUKOS. The defense is set to appeal the verdict. Should the Supreme Court uphold the conviction, Alexey Pichugin will be at large only in 2026 when he is 64. Furthermore, Pichugin is suspected of organizing one more murder. This instance is to be considered as a separate case. “I anticipated a bigger term for Pichugin,” the victim Rybin said. “But it is not the last trial. He will get his life sentence after all.”
“Pichugin has become a victim again,” Dmitry Kharitonov, lawyer of Leonid Nevzlin, told Kommersant. “It is clear that his case is just an effort to have Nevzlin [who lives in Israel] extradited. But it’s not the kind of methods of making business that people abroad would be sympathetic with. This verdict will have no effect on the life of my client.”
Vladislav Trifonov
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 18, 2006
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