The European Court of Human Rights postponed a long-awaited trial into a case filed by former Yukos management on Tuesday, citing the unavailability of Russian officials.
The delay marks at least the third time that the court has been forced to reschedule the trial because of complications stemming from the Russian government.
The first hearing into the Yukos case, scheduled for Thursday, has been moved to March 4 “due to the unavailability of both the ad hoc judge, Andrei Bushev, and the government agent, Georgy Matyushkin,” the Council of Europe said in an e-mailed statement.
It was unclear why Bushev and Matyushkin could not attend the hearing this week. Both were unavailable for comment Tuesday.
Bushev, a law professor at St. Petersburg State University, was appointed last fall to represent Russia at the trial as a so-called ad hoc judge, replacing Valery Musin, who resigned after being appointed to the board of Gazprom.
Bushev’s nomination caused the trial to be postponed from November to January because the court wanted to give the new judge more time to familiarize himself with the case.
The trial was delayed earlier last year when the Russian government appointed Musin to replace its previous judge in the court, Anatoly Kovler.
Matyushkin, Moscow’s official representative at the court, is also a deputy justice minister. A ministry spokeswoman Tuesday evening referred questions to Matyushkin’s Moscow office, where nobody picked up the phone.
Staff at Bushev’s St. Petersburg office said he was away and not available to answer questions.
Former Yukos managers are seeking $100 billion in damages for the government’s 2006 bankruptcy of the oil company, once Russia’s biggest. Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion and is on trial again in Moscow on related charges. He and his supporters say the charges are politically motivated.
A spokeswoman for the Yukos managers did not return requests for comment Tuesday.
The court in 2007 ruled that the arrest of Khodorkovsky’s Yukos partner Platon Lebedev was illegal, prompting Russia’s Supreme Court to make a similar ruling last month. The court ?decisions, however, did not lead to Lebedev’s release.
The further postponement is also notable in the context of Moscow’s obstinacy to ratify the 14th protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights, which would help eliminate a massive backlog of cases.
The Yukos complaint was filed in April 2004 and has been slowly making its way through the Strasbourg system.
Key State Duma deputies said last month that they would finally discuss the reform proposal, after President Dmitry Medvedev called for its ratification.
United Russia Deputy Vladimir Gruzdyev has said the ratification would most likely be discussed in the Duma plenum on Jan. 15, a day after the previous date for the Yukos hearing.
The European court, which has ruled against the Russian government in many cases in recent years, cannot force a country to comply with its decisions but can expel it from the Council of Europe. Each of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe has a judge seated in the European Court of Human Rights.
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