The court will not consider appeals from Vasily Aleksanyan and Anton Drel that request that the higher court overrule the March 18 decision of the Basmanny Court. The district court issued an order to freeze the bank accounts of the lawyers of the former head of Yukos on March 19. The court rejected the appeals and sent them to be revised.
On March 12, 2004, the Basmanny Court in Moscow ordered that the Swiss bank accounts of 20 individuals involved in the Yukos case be frozen. The former CEO of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky; the head of Menatep, Platon Lebedev; the former rector of the Russian State Humanities University, Leonid Nevzlin; and a Menatep shareholder, Mikhail Brudno, had their accounts frozen. Mr. Aleksanyan and Mr. Drel's accounts were also frozen by the court's decision.
According to the prosecutor general's office, Mr. Khodorkovsky, Mr. Lebedev, Mr. Nevzlin and other individuals involved in the case have more than 6.2 billion Swiss francs (about $5 billion) in five Swiss banks.
"The investigation claims that it has grounds to believe that part of the money stolen from the state could be in a bank in Switzerland. Mr. Aleksanyan and Mr. Drel are among a number of names of different companies, legal entities and physical persons," one of Mr. Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Genrikh Padva, said.
The Moscow City Court will consider the appeals of other people involved in the Yukos case on May 27.
The prosecutor's office charged Mr. Khodorkovsky, now in custody, under many articles of the Criminal Code, including larceny through massive fraud and tax evasion. Mr. Khodorkovsky has pleaded not guilty. He has just finished familiarizing himself with the indictment and the case can now be sent to court.
