Moscow Policeman Admits Falsification of Oppositionist Arrest Report

Artem Charukhin, the Moscow police officer who signed the report that served as a basis for the opposition leader Ilya Yashin's five-day imprisonment, testified in court that the report had been false. Yashin was detained by the police on 31 December 2010 during the opposition demonstration in support of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution (freedom of assembly). Yashin was charged with resisting arrest and was sentenced to five days of “administrative arrest” (short-term imprisonment). After serving the five-day term, Yashin challenged his detention in court contending that he did not resist. Charukhin was called as a witness. When Yashin pointed out that Charukhin’s written report was inconsistent with Charukhin’s own oral testimony and with the video record of the detention, the policeman confessed that he wrote the report based on the dictation of his superior, Senior Lieutenant Burtsev. In answering the judge’s questions, Charukhin said that it was the first time that he had been forced to falsify a report. Two other opposition leaders, Boris Nemtsov and Eduard Limonov, were also detained the same day and were each sentenced to 15-day prison terms.

http://lenta.ru/news/2011/02/07/yashin/
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2011/013/12.html
Грани-ТВ: 31 декабря на Триумфальной площади
http://grani-tv.ru/entries/1561/ (video)

UPDATE: Upper court affirms Yashin's sentence despite police officer's controversial testimony
http://lenta.ru/news/2011/02/11/yashin/

Finnish Businessman Wins Libel Suit against Russian Oppositionists

A court in Moscow awarded 200,000 rubles ($7,000) to businessman Gennady Timchenko, currently a Finnish citizen residing in Switzerland, in a libel suit against Russian opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov. Timchenko was unhappy with several statements from the oppositionists’ report entitled “Putin. The Results. 2010,” which alleges that Timchenko’s business achievements are due to his friendship with Vladimir Putin. In particular, the report stated, “Old friends of Putin who had been nobodies before he came to power - Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk, the Rotenberg brothers - became dollar billionaires.” The report also asserted, “There are reasons to believe that all those Timchenkos are merely nominal owners of the large assets, the beneficiary of which is Putin himself.” The court also directed the oppositionists to retract the statements.

http://lenta.ru/news/2011/02/02/etowin/

Ireland Expels Russian Diplomat over Spy Passports

Ireland ordered a Russian diplomat expelled after an investigation found that the Russian intelligence service had used six stolen Irish identities as cover for spies operating in the United States. Reportedly, one spy, Anna Chapman, used passport details stolen from the managing director of a Dublin charity for orphans called "To Russia With Love."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/1/ireland-expels-russian-diplomat-over-spy-passports/

London Court Blocks Rosneft-BP Share Swap

A court in London blocked a $8 bln share swap between major Russian and British oil companies, Rosneft and BP, who intended to create a strategic partnership to extract oil and natural gas in Russia. Russian shareholders in another of BP’s joint ventures in Russia, TNK-BP, won a preliminary injunction after arguing that the Rosneft-BP deal breaches the TNK-BP shareholders’ agreement, which prohibits BP from entering into joint ventures in Russia without TNK-BP participation. The shareholders' dispute should be resolved by an arbitration tribunal in Stockholm later this month.

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1577879

Opposition Demonstration Allowed, Oppositionists Arrested

The Moscow authorities allowed the opposition to demonstrate on Triumfalnaya Square in support of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution (freedom of assembly). The demonstration took place peacefully, the 500 to 700 participants being watched by 1400 police officers. About 20 oppositionists who intended to demonstrate on the part of the square next to the subway station were arrested. Opposition leader Eduard Limonov was arrested before he could join the demonstrators and was released after the demonstration ended.

http://lenta.ru/news/2011/01/31/free/
http://grani-tv.ru/entries/1612/ (video)


Грани-ТВ: 31 января. За рамками

EU, US Introduce Sanctions Against Belarus

The European Union imposed asset freezes and visa bans against Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko and 157 other Belarus officials as punishment for the crackdown on the opposition during the recent elections. The US joined the move the same day. The Belarus Foreign Ministry asserted that the EU sanctions constituted “encouragement of unlawful actions and extremism from abroad” and vowed to take “proportional and adequate” countermeasures.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belarus/8294022/US-hits-Belarus-with-new-sanctions.html
http://lenta.ru/news/2011/01/31/sanctions1/

Anna Chapman Registered as Trademark

Anna Chapman, known as one of the Russian spies captured by U.S. authorities in 2010 and later deported as a part of a prisoner swap, registered her name as a trademark with Rospatent (the Russian patent and trademark registration agency). The trademark is registered in classes 14 (precious metals, jewellery), 25 (clothing, footwear), 32 (beer, soft drinks), 33 (alcoholic beverages), and 41 (education; providing of training; entertainment; sporting and cultural activities).

http://www.rbcdaily.ru/2011/01/31/market/562949979630963
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFLgA1dTOLk (video)

Big Changes Afoot in Regulation of Lawyers in Russia

Last week, Vedomosti published an interview with Russian Deputy Minister of Justice Yuri Lyubimov, one of whose responsibilities includes supervision of the legal profession in Russia. According to the interview, profound changes are on the horizon for all legal professionals in Russia - including both "yuristy" and "advokaty." Currently, "advokaty" are highly regulated but represent a relatively small segment of the legal market in commercial matters. In contrast, "yuristy," including in-house lawyers and virtually all professionals employed by major Russian and international law firms in Russia, require no license whatsoever to practice law. Mr. Lyubimov states that the main parameters of the new reform are virtually certain and that they will involve a unification of both categories of lawyers into a single category of licensed practitioners (with possible sub-categories for specializations in criminal, civil and commercial law). He emphasizes that while nominally this may appear to be a move favoring Russian lawyers and "advokaty" especially, the intention is for the transition to be minimally disruptive to the exising legal market, while ensuring a uniform minimum quality standard for the profession.

http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/2011/01/27/253884 (Vedomosti, 27 January 2011)

Gazprom Management Accused of Self-Dealing

Leading Russian business newspaper Vedomosti published an article saying that many major suppliers of Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom are associated with friends of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and with top managers of Gazprom itself. The newspaper checked the publicly available data about Gazprom suppliers against the publicly available data on the ownership of the suppliers and discovered that several suppliers are associated with three Gazprom Board members (owned by their relatives, etc.). The managers categorically deny any conflict of interest. As for affiliation, one of the managers in question, Alexander Ananenkov, ironically commented: “According to Darwin’s theory, we descended from a monkey and, accordingly, are relatives; therefore we are all affiliated.”

http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/254083/v_seme_ne_bez_gazproma