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Germany uncovers Khodorkovsky bank accounts worth 20 mln euros

Khodorkovsky’s lawyer refused to comment on this information

BERLIN, October 16 (Itar-Tass) — Investigators uncovered accounts, belonging to ex-head of the YUKOS Oil Company Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his relatives to the tune of between 15 and 20 million euros in the German subsidiary of the Swiss Julius Baer Bank in Frankfurt am Main, wrote on Saturday the German mass media.

The newspaper Zueddeutche Zeitung reports that the accounts of the former owner of the YUKOS Company were found out in a search of the Julius Baer in Frankfurt am Main, which was prompted by the inspection of data on breakers of tax legislation among bank depositors in the city of Muenster, North Rhine-Westphalia State.

According to information, received by the newspaper from the juridical bodies of the Hessen Federal State, a criminal case was instituted against Khodorkovsky back several months ago on a suspicion of money laundering.

Khodorkovsky’s lawyer refused to comment on this information.

On December 30, 2010, Moscow’s Khamovnichesky court sentenced Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to a 14-year-old imprisonment each for oil embezzlement and money laundering. The defendants and their lawyers appealed this judgement. As a result, the Moscow City Court cut their punishment by one year on May 24 of the same year. Thus, the term of internment for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev expires in 2016.

Last September 20, the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg passed a ruling on a complaint of former YUKOS stockholders, tendered back in 2004, on actions of Russian tax inspectors. The plaintiffs demanded a redemption from the Russian budget of over 98 billion US dollars for “illegal exaction of property by the state”.

According to a verdict of the Strasbourg Court, it did not find sufficient evidence that tax claims to YUKOS by Russian tax bodies were groundless and spearheaded at factual expropriation of the company. Earlier, the Russian Justice Ministry noted that the management of the oil giant, operating through 22 fence companies, ducked from paying taxes in unheard-of quantities.