The Meschansky district court of Moscow has started evidence examination on Mikhail Khodorkovsky's alleged private tax evasion

Sunday, February 5, 2023

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Dmitry Shokhin, counsel for the prosecution, read an accounting expert board conclusion during today's session. The expertise had for its main purpose to calculate the amount of income taxes and Pension Fund fees the defendant would have paid for 1998-99 if he had been figuring as a private person, rather than an entrepreneur with no juridical person establishment. The board evaluated the sum at 54,532,186 rubles, roughly $1.9 million. The prosecutor next started examining evidence against the defendant on his alleged tax evasion as juridical person. The defendant, former proprietor of Yukos, interrupted him to make the following statement: "The public prosecutor read several references from the case file today. As they allege, Business Oil and several other companies paid taxes with Yukos bills, a part of which had not been repaid. In fact, they were all repaid. I am sure on that point." The information offered by the prosecution contained references to primary documents proving that the bills were not repaid, Khodorkovsky went on. "I never came across such documents in my file," he stressed. As the indictment has it, Khodorkovsky made a plot with certain other persons for repeated corporate tax evasion. He led a team which used men-of-straw to underpay 17,395,449,282 rubles, roughly $600 million, for 1999-2000. As investigators assume, Khodorkovsky had in mind private tax evasion as he applied to the tax inspection for a patent to exempt him from the income tax and Pension Fund fees. He underpaid 53,024,274 rubles of income tax and 1,507,912 rubles Pension Fund fees for 1998-99, says the indictment. The federal Prosecutor General's experts accuse the tycoon of deliberately misrepresenting his incomesin fiscal declarations to evade private income tax and insurance fees to extrabudgetary government funds involving exceptionally large sums.

Bookmark The Meschansky district court of Moscow has started evidence examination on Mikhail Khodorkovsky's alleged private tax evasion