Vladimir Kvachkov - First Trial

First Trial

In the spring 2006, the court hearings started. The accused maintained that the assassination was staged by Chubais himself. In November–December 2006 Karvatko changed his testimony accusing the investigators in undue pressure and threats. He said that he was abducted by police soon after assassination attempt and tortured. He agreed to slander defendants after his kidnappers threatened to imprison his wife and showed him a forged protocol of the search in his apartment alleging there had been found illegal ammunition and narcotics. He also provided audio recordings of some of his conversations with militia officers pressuring him. But the judge refused to make an examination of this tape and to file it to the case. Right away after that Karvatko statement the jury panel was dismissed at the request of the prosecutor who stated the jury could no longer remain unbiased when they heard how Karvatko's testimony had been obtained. Only the initial of Karvatko's testimonies had been considered valid by court. While the lawyers of the plaintiff insisted that Karvatko was pressured by the suspects and their friends, Tatiana Mironova, mother of another suspect, Ivan Mironov, publicly accused investigators in torturing Karvatko. In December 2006 the court was restarted with the new jury. As on the December 2007, jury has been dismissed twice, and the hearings continued with the third jury. Pro-Kremlin liberal media pleaded for "tough sentences," to cool ‘folk avengers’ and finally, after three years of imprisonment Kvachkov, Naydenov and Yashin were acquitted by the court on 5 June 2008.

Information, that surfaced during Kvachkov's trial, gave grounds to suspect federal involvement in terrorist bombings in Russia, instead of Chechen Insurgency, as it was widely believed before, though in 2002 a book has been published Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within, almost about the same. This information leak only fueled Kvachkov's broad popularity among the Russian people, as well as a growing distrust to Federal Government.

After the acquittal of Kvachkov Chubais made statement telling that he has no doubts that Kvachkov was responsible for the assassination, and that it was Kvachkov, who personally tried to shoot him in March 2005. On the other hand he believes that acquittal of the guilty is better than sentencing of innocent Kvachkov, in retaliation, called the attack on Chubais the "first act of armed resistance in the national liberation war",

After the acquittal, Kvachkov said "now I have a chance to finish what I started", meaning his doctoral thesis, but some media quoted it out of context. Still he maintained that he did not participate in the assassination and that it was staged by Chubais himself to divert attention from his business problems

The case returned to court again after the prosecution's appeal. The new trial started on September 29, 2008. The next court session has been postponed until October 13 because only 6 out of 500 potential jurors arrived to court on the day the jury selection was scheduled to begin.

On October 13, 2008 the case was sent by court back to the prosecution after the judge received Kvachkov's case and Ivan Mironov's case as two separate cases. The judge sent both cases back to the prosecutor so that they would be merged into one case.

The trial on a new merged case began on November 23, 2009. On 21 August 2010 the jury has found that there is not enough evidence presented in the persecutor case and all the defendants were acquitted again.