Alexey Pichugin

Alexey Pichugin is the former head of the internal economic security department of the Yukos oil company. On 30 March 2005, he was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in a strict regime colony after a jury found him guilty of organising the attempted murder of Olga Kostina, former public relations adviser to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chairman of the board of directors of the Menatep industrial-financial association, and of the murder of Tambov businessman Sergei Gorin and his wife Olga Gorina, and of the attack on Viktor Kolesov, business manager of ZAO Rosprom. Pichugin was also accused of threatening to kill businessman Sergei Lobikov, but this episode was excluded from the case due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. At first, the jury panel found Pichugin not guilty, after which it was disbanded and a new panel found him guilty. Pichugin's lawyers believe that the jury was pressurised by the Prosecutor General's Office. The trial was held in a closed hearing.
As early as 14 April 2005, Pichugin was charged with the murder of Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk, the murder of Valentina Korneeva, the director of the Moscow-based Trading Company Phoenix, the attempted murder of Evgeny Rybin, the head of the Austrian oil company East Petroleum, and, as a result of the second attempt on Rybin's life, the murder of his driver Nikolai Fedotov and the attempt on his guards Alexey Ivanov and Evgeny Filippov. In August 2006, he was sentenced by the Moscow City Court to 24 years' imprisonment in a strict regime colony, but the prosecutor's office appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court, after which the case was sent for a new trial. In August 2007, the Moscow City Court sentenced Pichugin to life imprisonment in a special regime colony. According to the investigation, Pichugin organised these crimes on behalf of Yukos co-owner Leonid Nevzlin. Human rights activists consider the case against Pichugin to be falsified and his prosecution to be part of a large-scale campaign launched by the Russian authorities against Yukos. On 9 June 2016, it became known that Pichugin received a rejection of his petition for pardon. The rejection document was signed by Yuri Berg, governor of the Orenburg region, where the colony where Pichugin is serving his sentence is located. In July 2016, Pichugin was transported to Moscow. He was interrogated, but it is not known what the case is about. Mikhail Khodorkovsky stated that Pichugin was pressurised in order to obtain the testimony needed by the investigation.

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