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Russia – Holland 2009

On 19 June 2009 a bi-lingual, colour supplement to The Moscow Times will be published. The “Russia-Holland” supplement is an annual business publication, devoted to the partnership between Russian and Dutch companies.

This year the magazine is timed to coincide with the most glorious event in the cultural co-operation between the two countries for the last decade – the opening of Hermitage Amsterdam. The unique exhibition centre will be opened on the 19 June by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev.



Sunday, July 05, 2009 Updated at 05 July 2009 20:47 Moscow Time.

The Moscow Times » » News

For 'Spy' Moiseyev, Jail Seems Inevitable

17 November 2000By Sarah Karush / The Moscow TimesAccused spy Edmond Pope may have little hope for a fair trial, but at least he has his president on his side. Accused spy Valentin Moiseyev had no such luck: His president pronounced him guilty before the case even went to court.

In the Moscow City Court, just two floors above the room where Pope is on trial, Moiseyev’s second trial — granted by the Supreme Court after the city court convicted him last year — is coming to a close. But his supporters say it came no closer to being a fair hearing than the first one.

They never expected it to be otherwise. After all, President Vladimir Putin stacked the cards against Moiseyev, a former diplomat: In the same oft-quoted interview in which Putin, then the head of the Federal Security Service, accused environmental organizations and charities of sometimes being covers for spies, the future president gave his verdict on the Moiseyev case as well.

"We don’t do anything just for the sake of doing it. We work on the basis of facts alone. The Moiseyev case, by the way, is just such an instance. And it doesn’t matter if he was working for South Korean intelligence or North Korean," Putin said in the interview, published in Komsomolskaya Pravda in July 1999.

Pope may be getting much the same deal as Moiseyev — supporters of Pope say they don’t believe he is getting a fair trial. But if Pope is convicted, he and his family can still hope for his release into U.S. custody. After all, Pope has no less an advocate for his cause than U.S. President Bill Clinton, who lobbied Putin to release Pope during a meeting this week in Brunei.

Moiseyev, a Russian citizen, cannot hope for such a "diplomatic solution."

A former Foreign Ministry official who helped determine Russian policy toward both Koreas, Moiseyev stands accused of giving away state secrets to a South Korean spy.

The FSB has said that South Korean diplomat Cho Sung-woo, who was expelled from Moscow at the time of Moiseyev’s arrest in July 1998, was caught red-handed with "secrets" Moiseyev gave him. But, according to Moiseyev’s lawyers, the document found on Cho was the text of a lecture Moiseyev had delivered in public.

A court convicted Moiseyev of having spied for South Korea from 1992 to 1998. That conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the lower court was too vague about what secrets Moiseyev gave away, and ordered a retrial.

Moiseyev’s second trial has gone pretty much the same as the first, his lawyers said. All defense motions — including motions to let Moiseyev out of jail and to request a new translation of documents submitted as evidence — have been rejected.

Throughout both trials, Moiseyev was not permitted to read the prosecution’s official charges against him. Moiseyev’s lawyer, Yury Gervis, said at a news conference last week that the FSB had refused to give his client a copy of the charges because they contain secret information.

"During the whole trial — both the first and the second — Moiseyev has not had the documents that lay out the charges against him. He cannot compare what the judge is saying to what is really there, he cannot answer questions or clarify his position. Moiseyev’s right to a defense has been violated," Gervis said.

Karina Moskalenko, a well-known lawyer who has been assisting in Moiseyev’s defense, said the courts pass documents to defendants via the administration of the jail where they are kept.

But if the Justice Ministry runs most of the nation’s pre-trial detention centers, accused spies are held in jails run directly by their accusers, the FSB. Among the FSB’s jails is Lefortovo, where both Moiseyev and Pope are being held.

"When I went to see Moiseyev to give him the draft of our appeal … they immediately took everything from me and said that Moiseyev would get this only through the [Lefortovo] administration," said Moskalenko.

"Can you imagine what kind of confidentiality there can be in the lawyer-client relationship through the administration of the detention center — and not just any detention center, but one that is part of the accusing side?"

In the end, Lefortovo never passed the documents to Moiseyev, she said.

Moskalenko said such violations would be described in an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. A person has the right to appeal to the European Court only when he has exhausted all channels in his home country.

But Moskalenko said exceptions can be made in cases when a violation has been committed that is impossible to rectify on appeal. She said Putin’s 1999 statement constituted such an instance, and for that reason Moiseyev’s wife, Natalya Denisova, opted not to wait to submit an appeal to the European Court.

"The current president, who then headed the FSB, gave his opinion about the guilt of an individual, in this case Moiseyev, in a categorical tone," Moskalenko said.

"Can you hack this away with an ax, forget it, exclude it, erase all memory of it or correct it? No, never."

http://www.index.org.ru:8104/mayday/moiseev/index.html Information on the Moiseyev case from his supporters, including court documents.