JUDGE TELLS OF KREMLIN THREAT
if she did not reverse a ruling handed down against the Federal Property Fund.
Yelena Valyavina, first deputy chairwoman of the Supreme Arbitration Court, told Moscow's Dorogomilovsky District Court that Valery Boyev, an adviser on personnel appointments in the presidential administration, said she would not be returned to her post if she refused to change her position, Kommersant reported Tuesday.
"I was told unambiguously [by Boyev] that if I wanted to be re-elected [to my position], I'd face problems," Valyavina testified as a defense witness Monday in a libel lawsuit filed by Boyev against radio news program host Vladimir Solovyov.
On the Solovyiniye Treli program on Serebryany Dozhd radio, Solovyov said there were "no independent courts in Russia," but there were "courts dependent on Boyev," Kommersant reported.
In her testimony, Valyavina said Boyev asked her in the fall of 2005 to change her ruling regarding the proper ownership of a share package in Tolyattiazot, the country's biggest producer of ammonia. She said Boyev made his threat when she refused to comply.
In 1996, the Samara region's Property Fund sold a 6.1 percent stake in Tolyattiazot to joint Russian-Swiss agricultural company Tafco.
In March 2004, The Federal Property Ministry appealed the deal. After having its first two attempts turned down, a third appellate court ruled that the Tolyattiazot deal should be voided. The Supreme Arbitration Court overturned that ruling in November 2005.
Valyavina could not be reached at her office Tuesday afternoon.
Solovyov's lawyer, Shota Gorgadze, praised Valyavina for her testimony Tuesday, calling it an "exceptionally courageous and heroic act."
A source in the presidential administration, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "the final decision was up to the court."
The next hearing in Boyev's libel case is scheduled for May 26, Gorgadze said.
In 2001, then-deputy head of the presidential administration Dmitry Kozak introduced a legal reform program, part of which involved trying to guarantee greater independence for judges, although charges of governmental pressure on judges are made regularly in the legal community.
In a January campaign speech, President Dmitry Medvedev called Russia "a country of legal nihilism" with a "disregard for the law." He has promised to strengthen the rule of law to fight corruption and to encourage growth.
A big scandal is about to happen in Samara Region. Ex-judge of the Samara Region Arbitration Court Nadezhda Kostuchenko has applied to the European Court of Human Rights with a request to check legitimacy of the award to deprive her of powers.
It seemed like any other workday at Togliatti Azot, a giant chemical factory in Russia's Samara region, on the Volga River 600 miles east of Moscow. Engineers were on their morning rounds, and union representatives had just finished a talk about financial support for newlyweds. Then around 11 a.m., dozens of men dressed in camouflage and toting automatic weapons charged into the administration building. "We thought it was a terrorist attack," Sergei Korushev, the plant's deputy director, says of the September, 2005, raid.
One of the main tasks confronting the country as a whole and especially State power is to create favorable conditions for running a business and developing entrepreneurship, as President Medvedev declared more than once. That, in its turn, presupposes first of all protection of property. The Head of the State, having recently taken up his post, is caught here by a very powerful and evasive enemy – raiders, who have been living and thriving for the second ten of years and have especially developed for the last 4-5 years. And who can be defeated only if blocked all around. Just that very conclusion was drawn in the report of the president of the Centre of Political Technologies Igor Bunin “Raidership as a social, economic and political phenomenon of Modern Russia” which he presented yesterday.