 As
part of the YUKOS probe, the Prosecutor General's Office searched on Thursday
the offices of a PR agency that provides consulting services to the liberal
Yabloko party, the Agency for Strategic Communications (ASK).
A group from the Prosecutor General's Office and the FSB, arrived at the
agency's office on Thursday morning, producing a warrant for the seizure
of computer servers and the agency's statutory documents, which the prosecutors
believe may contain evidence of alleged tax evasion by some of YUKOS's
top shareholders.
About 20 men arrived at the office of the Agency for Strategic
Communications in central Moscow at 09h00 on Thursday. The men produced
ID cards issued in the names of the Prosecutor General's Office and FSB
employees, as well as a search warrant and a warrant for the seizure of
computer servers containing databases and statutory documents of the agency.
"The warrant read that the search is being conducted as part of the
case into tax evasion by entities linked to YUKOS," one of the agency's
employees told Gazeta.Ru. "I do not remember the exact wording, but
it refers to the investigation into OAO Apatit". To recap, one of
the top shareholders in YUKOS, chairman of Menatep Group Platon Lebedev,
arrested in July this year, has been charged with tax evasion and the
embezzlement of budget funds during the 1994 privatisation of the country's
leading fertiliser plant Apatit.
ASK's employees told Gazeta.Ru that during the search they were all
ordered to go to the conference room, which they were not allowed to leave.
In the meantime, investigators searched their work desks. The search was
conducted in the absence of lawyers.
ASK specializes in the development and implementation of projects in
the mass media, public relations, political analysis and consulting services.
According to a statement on the agency's web site, "The main goal
of the agency's operations is to provideprofessional services in communication
technology."
The agency offers services to political parties, government agencies,
intergovernmental organizations, Russian and foreign businesses and public
organizations.
Some time later, State Duma deputies and Yabloko's members, Sergei
Mitrokhin and Alexei
Melnikov, arrived at ASK's offices.
The deputies urged investigators to stop the search and wait for lawyers
to arrive. However, that had no effect, as the officials ignored the request
from the deputies. Instead, with the help of experts from the Emergencies
Ministry, they broke open two of the company's three safes where the statutory
documents were stored. According to ASK employees, FSB representatives
were checking the contents of computer software on the laptops they had
brought with them.
Director of the agency, Vadim Malkin, told Gazeta.Ru that ASK had no
connection whatsoever with YUKOS's archives. "Such assertions are
sheer nonsense," Malkin said. He confirmed that the agency was providing
consulting services to Yabloko in the run-up to the parliamentary elections.
Commenting on Thursday's raid, the chief spokesman for YUKOS, Alexander
Shadrin, also said that the Agency for Strategic Communications had no
connection with YUKOS. Shadrin said the prosecutors' hopes to find "some
mythical database of companies controlled by YUKOS" in the ASK offices
"is, at the very least, strange".
Shadrin also said that the "list of affiliated companies of YUKOS
is published on the first page of the company's web site, www.yukos.ru.
It seems perplexing that the date available from open sources is being
sought in the office of a company that is unrelated to us. With equal
luck the data could also be sought in a zoo, circus or asylum."
To recap, similar searches have been conducted over the past two weeks
in a YUKOS-sponsored orphanage and boarding school in the village of Koralovo
near Moscow, in the offices of the State Duma deputy Vladimir Dubov, and
the Menatep lawyer Anton Drel.
The Prosecutor General's Office on Thursday confirmed that a search
had been conducted at ASK's offices as part of the YUKOS case.
"An investigation is being carried out as part of a criminal investigation
into theft and tax evasion by several structures, controlled by YUKOS,"
the Prosecutor General's Office information directorate said on Thursday.
"Investigators are interested in databases and financial documents
of the company. The investigation is being carried out in strict compliance
with the law, and in the presence of witnesses."
The Yabloko party said that a number of documents and electronic media
owned by the party had been confiscated during the search at the Agency
for Strategic Communications, that began at 9am and continued until 7pm
Thursday.
"The Prosecutor-General's Office and the Federal Security Service
have confiscated documents and electronic information media, linked to
the election campaign and owned by the Yabloko party." This comes
from a statement issued by the party leader Grigory
Yavlinsky. The document notes that the agency was carrying out political
consultative work for the Yabloko election campaign.
The statement notes: "Immediately after the search the leaders
of the Prosecutor-General's Office were warned that the documents being
taken away belonged to the Yabloko party, and that confiscation of these
documents hampered the party's election campaign." According to Yavlinsky,
the FSB staff and prosecutors were preventing deputies from Yabloko's
State Duma faction, Sergey Mitrokhin and Alexei Melnikov, from leaving
the building.
On completion of the search, the prosecutor's office said: "a great
pile of documents were seized during the search, including in electronic
form. They are related to the case of embezzlement and tax evasion by
a number of companies controlled by YUKOS". In addition over 700,000
dollars were seized. None of the company's staff, or those present during
the search acknowledged that the money belonged to them.
"They all disassociated themselves from the amount," the Prosecutor-General's
Office said.
ASK director Vadim Malkin told Gazeta.Ru that the safe had never contained
such a large amount of money. "I am surprises that the investigators
did not find a shaft with a ballistic missle in the courtyard," Malkin
said.
He added: "Prior to the statement from the Prosecutor General's
Office, I still retained some hope that the searches were attributable
to some mistake, but now those hopes have gone. This is an astronomical
amount. Naturally, we do not have such an amount."
See also:
State Duma election
2003
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