All news

Summons handed to Baturina by Luzhkov has no legal force-lawyer

The lawyer of wife of the former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, businesswoman Yelena Baturina

MOSCOW, November 16 (Itar-Tass) —— The lawyer of wife of the former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, businesswoman Yelena Baturina, believes that a court summons plea for the interrogation passed to the latter through her husband does not have any legal consequences.

“This handover of a summons plea to a person, who is staying abroad, is not envisaged either by the Russian criminal procedure legislation or the international convention,” Baturina’s lawyer Alexander Asnis told Itar-Tass on Wednesday. “Even if Yuri Mikhailovich passes a summons plea to her, this is not an official submission of a court summons plea and therefore does not entail any legal consequences,” he said.

The lawyer noted that the legislation envisages that the summons plea should be handed in under international laws through the law enforcement agencies concerned in a country, where this person is staying. “If the Interior Ministry intends to hand in a summons plea in Great Britain, where Yelena Baturina is staying, or any other country, the ministry should act under the criminal procedure legislation and international laws,” the lawyer claimed. The European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters envisaged the procedure to hand in a court summons abroad, he recalled.

“In this case the handover of the summons does not entail any legal consequences regardless whether Baturina decides or does not decide to summon for the interrogation,” Asnis noted. He was puzzled that some reports were made with the reference to some media sources that the investigators can make a ruling almost about the forcible appearance for interrogation.

“As far as I am concerned, the summons plea did not set a concrete date or it was a summons plea on agreement. So, the summon plea envisages that Baturina and the investigators will agree on a summons date if she finds it necessary,” Alexander Asnis told Itar-Tass in reply to a question what date the detectives set in the court summons.

On Tuesday, the former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who was interrogated in the Investigative Department of the Russian Interior Ministry on the share misappropriation case in the Bank of Moscow, pledged to pass a summons plea from the investigator to his wife Baturina, a source in the Investigative Department said.