The Yukos Affair

Abstract

On 2 July 2003 Platon Lebedev, considered to be Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s second-in-command, left hospital to respond to a summons for questioning at the prosecutor’s office regarding the 1994 investment tender through which a company called ‘Volna’, fronting for Menatep, had obtained a 20 per cent shareholding in the mineral fertilizer company Apatit. At the end of the interrogation he was charged with large-scale theft, the case being that he, and others, had fraudulently obtained the Apatit shares by winning an investment tender, the conditions of which were not fulfilled. Lebedev was held overnight and the following day an arrest warrant was obtained from a judge, allowing him to be held without bail.