Alexey Pichugin

Pichugin was first arrested on June 19, 2003, and accused of the attempted murders of Victor Kolesov and Olga Kostina in 1998. Kolesov was a mid-level manager at Rosprom – a Yukos-related company, who had been mugged and who testified that he had no enemies at Yukos or elsewhere. Kostina was a functionary at Moscow mayor's office who had briefly worked at Yukos. Kolesov had been mugged and robbed on the street in Moscow. An explosive device had been left outside Kostina's parents' apartment, though it injured no one and she did not live there. Pichugin was further accused of the alleged murder of Sergei and Olga Gorin. Sergei Gorin was a Tambov businessman who had once worked at Bank Menatep. Gorin and his wife have been missing since an armed robbery at their home in 2002.

There was no physical or other direct evidence presented at Pichugin's closed-court trial that implicated his involvement in any of noted crimes. The first jury was empaneled on October 1, 2004, but it was dismissed by the court on December 9, 2004 without reaching a verdict. A new jury was formed on January 25, 2005. That jury reached a guilty verdict on March 30, 2005. Pichugin was sentenced to 20 years in prison. As noted above, the European Court found this trial unfair and stated that the appropriate remedy was a new trial, which the Russian Supreme Court has denied. Pichugin has sought relief from the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers to have the Russian Federation abide by the ECHR judgment.[2][11]

The case against Pichugin depended entirely on assertions of jailhouse confessors. These men claimed that they had been hired to commit the crimes by a third person. According to them, this third person told the confessed criminals that Pichugin was behind the crimes. In other words, the case was based on double hearsay statements by individuals who were also prosecuted. The star prosecution witness was a multiple murderer serving a life sentence - a fact the jury was not allowed to know. As the European Court found, the Russian trial court materially limited Pichugin's lawyer's ability to cross examine these witnesses, thereby testing their credibility.[2]

On April 14, 2005, additional charges of “attempted murder” and “murder” charges were made against Pichugin. This time, Pichugin was accused of involvement in the murder of Valentina Korneyeva and the attempted murder of Evgeny Rybin and his bodyguards, Alexei Ivanov and Evgeny Filloppov, as well as the murder of Rybin's driver, Nikolai Fedotov. Korneyeva owned a tea store, which she allegedly had refused to sell to Bank Menatep. Rybin is a Russian businessman who had commercial disputes with Yukos.

In July 2005, former Yukos executive Leonid Nevzlin was in the United States at the invitation of the U.S. Congress to testify about the political motivations of the Yukos campaign and about Pichugin's case in particular. On July 4, 2005, while Nevzlin was preparing for his testimony, Russian prosecutors announced yet more charges against both Pichugin. They indicted Nevzlin for the same crimes, as well as those for which Pichugin had been charged in April. The July 4 charge alleged that Pichugin had been involved in the murder of Vladimir Petukov, mayor of Nefteyugansk, and the attempted murder of Vyacheslav Kokoshkin, Petukov's bodyguard. Nefteyugansk is a city that had recently settled a local tax dispute with Yukos.

In each of Pichugin's trials, prosecutors relied on witnesses who, during Nevzlin's subsequent trial on the same noted crimes, later recanted and testified that investigators had told them to name Pichugin (and Nevzlin). For example, Alexei Peshkun, whose testimony was relied upon for Pichugin's first conviction, subsequently submitted a hand-written document stating that his statements were coerced by Russian authorities. Gennady Tzigelnik, whose testimony was central in Pichugin's second case, admitted that he did not know Pichugin or Nevzlin at all and only implicated him when told to do so by investigators. Mikhail Ovsyannikov, whose testimony was relied upon concerning the Korneyeva incident, also stated that the Russian investigator gave him Pichugin's name and told him to implicate Pichugin. Asked directly if he implicated Pichugin (and Nevzlin) in response to government threats, Ovsyannikov stated that he did. Another jailhouse confessor, Vladimir Shapiro, stated that investigators offered him “manna from heaven” if he falsely implicated Pichugin. Evgeny Reshetinikov, another of the supposed “confessors”, testified likewise.

Regardless of this manufactured evidence, on July 5, 2005, the deputy prosecutor gave an interview in which he stated Pichugin (and Nevzlin's) guilt as fact. Consequently, the jury pool was tainted and Pichugin was unable to exercise his right to jury trial. On September 11, 2005, the lead investigator gave a similar interview, expressing his opinion that Pichugin was guilty. Once the trial began, like in his first case, defense counsel's attempts to challenge the witnesses against Pichugin were cut off by the presiding judge. As discussed further below, the European Court of Human Rights found that both the pre-trial publicity by prosecutors and the conduct of the judge violated Pichugin's human rights.

After Pichugin's second trial ended on August 17, 2006, he received a sentence of 21 years. On February 21, 2007, however, the conviction was quashed by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on the ground that the evidence was insufficient. That court ordered that, after re-trial, Pichugin should be given a harsher sentence, confirming the result of the case in advance. The retrial was completed on August 6, 2007. It relied on the same evidence previously found insufficient, but Pichugin was nonetheless convicted. This time, he was sentenced to life in prison.