Alexey Pichugin

Alexey Vladimirovich Pichugin (Алексе́й Влади́мирович Пичу́гин; born July 25, 1962, in Orekhovo-Zuevo, Moscow Oblast, USSR) is a former manager in the security department at the Russian oil company Yukos.

From his childhood Alexey Pichugin looked forward to a military career, so after leaving school in 1979 he entered the Interior Ministry's Higher Command School in Novosibirsk.

Pichugin graduated in 1983 and was sent to the Interior Ministry's unit for the Tula region.

In 1986 Pichugin entered the KGB’s school in Novosibirsk.

On graduating, he started his work for the Committee for State Security.

From 1987 to 1994 Pichugin worked in the administration of the KGB's military secret service.

Pichugin left the FSB with the rank of major, in 1994, after the restructuring of state security services.

In total, he had spent 15 years protecting Soviet and Russian state interests through his membership of the military and the secret services.

On leaving the FSB, Aleksey Pichugin joined the security service of Bank Menatep.

In 1998, when Bank Menatep became the holding company for Yukos oil, Pichugin was appointed a manager of the economic security department, one of a half dozen departments within the Yukos's security group.

Pichugin reported to the head of Yukos security, Mikhail Shestapalov.

The economic security department was responsible for background checks, securing company property and preventing theft.

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.

In 2003, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a campaign to expropriate Yukos and to harass and punish its executives.

During testimony before an international tribunal in a case challenging Russia's campaign against Yukos, in which the tribunal found the company indeed had been unlawfully expropriated, a former advisor to President Putin testified that the campaign included formation in February 2003 of “a special unit [that] was set up to fabricate evidence” and to “launch the Government attack [against Yukos] under the guise of ‘legitimate’ court proceedings". Pichugin faced multiple trials, which have been determined by the European Court of Human Rights to have been unfair and in violation of his human rights. His case has been described as a politically motivated attempt to obtain false evidence against Yukos executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin and Pichugin is said to be “the longest-serving political prisoner in Russia".

Though not himself a high-ranking Yukos executive, Pichugin was arrested on June 19, 2003.

His was the first arrest in the campaign against Yukos and those associated with that company.

Many view Pichugin as a pawn in efforts to silence or punish Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin or other politically active Yukos leaders.

During his first year in captivity, Pichugin described being drugged and interrogated without counsel while being pressed to give testimony against Yukos's leadership.

He has since been subjected to multiple trials in Moscow, each accusing him of involvement in supposed murders and attempted murders.

While the trials resulted in his conviction, and in his being sentenced to life in prison, the cases against Pichugin were based entirely on hearsay accusations of jailhouse confessors, a number of which later testified that they named Pichugin only after being pressured by Russian investigators to do so.

As noted, the European Court of Human Rights found that his trials violated Pichugin's fundamental human rights.

The European Court found that Pichugin's rights were violated by the secrecy of the trial proceedings in the first case against him, which were closed to the public and media; by the trial court's refusal to hear defense evidence; by the trial court's interfering with defense cross-examination of government witnesses; and by violation of the presumption of innocence to which criminal defendants are entitled in every case.

In both European Court judgments, the Court stated that the appropriate remedy for Pichugin would be a new and fair trial.

In both cases, Russian authorities refused to provide that new and fair trial.

According to former Minister of Justice of Germany Herta Däubler-Gmelin: “The European Court found that [Pichugin’s] fair trial rights had been violated and ordered a new trial.

But Russia ignored that judgment and continues to hold Mr. Pichugin in the notorious ‘Black Dolphin’ prison....”

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.

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.

In April 2017, during free debate before the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe, the appointed rapporteur from the PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights called out Pichugin’s case, describing Russia’s treatment of him as “tantamount to moral torture,” stating: “There can be no place for such inhumanity in our community of law.”