The notorious second case against former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky had no major impact on Russia's investment climate, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Wednesday.
On New Year's Eve, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were sentenced to 14 years in jail after being found guilty of stealing millions of tons of oil from their now defunct company Yukos in a trial broadly viewed as political revenge from the Russian prime minister.
"Well, investors are coming. They continue to come, and actually the government has on its agenda one of the major issues like preserving the atmosphere favorable for investors, for foreign investors," Peskov said in an interview with the English-language Russia Today TV channel.
"During the so-called scandal about Khodorkovsky's second trial we witnessed altogether the signature of an extremely important and unprecedented agreement on exchange of assets between Rosneft and BP," Peskov continued. "We have no doubt that in this or that way it will be implemented."
The spokesman also mentioned another major deal in which France's Total SA, one of the world's largest oil and gas groups, has decided to buy 12% in Russia's biggest independent natural gas producers, Novatek. This will make the French company a core partner in the Yamal liquefied natural gas project in the Russian Arctic.
"We are speaking about very serious international companies, conglomerates operating worldwide and these companies are treating Russia as a country suitable for their investments. And we are satisfied with that," Peskov said.
The head of AFK Sistema, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, told the economic forum in Davos the problem of souring investment climate in Russia should not be treated with regard only to the Khodorkovsky case or other political reasons. He named bureaucracy, corruption, lack of experienced business specialists and demographic factors as major problems.
Peskov's comments come just weeks after British investment company Hermitage Capital filed a suit with the Constitutional Court on February 21 against the Russian Interior Ministry over a criminal tax investigation opened against the company in 2007, The Moscow Times reported.
Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was defending the company against tax evasion charges, died aged 37 in a Moscow pretrial detention facility after being refused medical treatment for pancreatitis.
The head of Hermitage Capital, William Browder, once the largest portfolio investor in Russia, told the paper the suit was an attempt to combat "the development over the last five years of the whole idea of corporate raiding and extortion by law enforcement officers."
MOSCOW, March 9 (RIA Novosti)
