Word: russian
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...lopsided statistic startled Russia. At the end of 2008, news reports said that 28% of all pending claims to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had been brought by Russian citizens against the Russian Federation. While several elements contributed to the statistic (Russia's large population in proportion to the rest of Europe, for one), the chief factor was clear: Russians are unhappy with their own court system and don't believe they can get justice from it. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, a lawyer himself, announced plans to reform the Russian justice system to stop the flow of complaints...
...ECHR announced a doozy: it said oil giant Yukos, which was effectively shut down by Moscow in 2006, three years after its boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was thrown into prison on charges of fraud and tax evasion, could proceed with a lawsuit seeking $34 billion in damages against the Russian government. It is the largest claim the ECHR has agreed to consider and the first ever involving a corporation. The financial and political fallout from an ECHR judgment could be immense...
...then nationalized the company, effectively handing the government of Vladimir Putin, then President and now Prime Minister, virtual monopolistic control of Russia's vital energy industry. It gives the once politically ambitious Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev at least some good news in the face of the Russian government's continuing campaign against them. Later this month, the two men, who are already serving multiyear prison terms, will face fresh charges of embezzlement and grand theft...
Since the filing of the complaint by Yukos managers in 2004, the Russian government has tried everything to stop it from becoming admissible. One of its arguments against the litigation was that Yukos failed to exhaust its appeals in Russian courts; another was that Yukos as a company no longer exists. Both were overruled by the ECHR...
Moskalenko, however, is not ready to give up on Russian justice, in spite of her uphill battles to make sure local courts actually deliver it. (The government, at one point, unsuccessfully tried to disbar her, and Moskalenko believes that she too may be targeted by enemies.) "The current system is such that the prosecution has a big advantage over the defense," she says. Among Moskalenko's clients are the children of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who reported on human-rights abuses and was slain in October 2006. Moskalenko does not see the acquittal last week of Politkovskaya's alleged contract...