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In one sense, the petition had already brought a result. In it, Kostromina had stated that Pichugin was being held in Lefortovo, the FSB's own detention centre. But when Russia joined the Council of Europe, it promised to place all its remand facilities under the control of the Justice Ministry.
So the very fact that the FSB had its own detention centre was a direct breach of obligations given to Europe. Days before the arrival of Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the PACE rapporteur tasked with looking into the Yukos affair, Pichugin was urgently moved to a Justice Ministry remand cell.
Official fastidiousness and the twisted logic behind it sometimes take on grotesque dimensions. In the Pichugin affair fundamental principles of international law had been flouted, and our law-enforcement agencies sought to favourably impress their guest - see, the suspect is in the right prison. They had let the horse out of the stable and then lovingly bolted the door. The rapporteur still noted this violation in her report.
But moving Pichugin did bring some benefits. He had never felt well in Lefortovo and had lost 35 kg. But in Matrosskaya Tishina he suddenly began to recover and even put on weight. Either the very walls in Lefortovo were leeching the health out of him, or maybe he was being poisoned with something else as well?
One way or another, having extracted from Pichugin neither evidence of his own supposed crimes nor compromising material against Yukos, the investigators lost heart. An early victory was not to be. The long pre-trial investigation began.
Chapter 5
The pre-trial investigation and the leads
In Chapter 3 I wrote that in the interests of the truth all the possible leads on the Gorins' disappearance had to be followed up, as stated by investigating officer Burtovoy in his letter to Nurgaliyev and Zaostrovtsev. The missing couple's character and background play a vital role here.
I and my colleagues at Novaya Gazeta lack the resources of the security agencies. We have done what we can, so let the reader judge.
Olga and Sergey Gorin had had no official employment for some time. Yet they lived in a nice house in an upmarket suburb of Tambov, to where they moved from a posh apartment block. They had several cars, a driver and a nanny. And they had kept their flat, where Olga's mother, Galina Dedova, still lived. She was to be a key witness at the trial.
The Gorins did not look like people fallen on hard times. They clearly had some kind of illicit income. But from where? This is a crucial question, and the prosecution even tried to find the answer. According to its story, light was shed on this by the testimony of a former associate of Sergey Gorin, by the name of Peshkun. He was also charged as part of the Pichugin case.
Peshkun testified that some time previously, Gorin had paid a visit to Khodorkovskiy's father and allegedly threatened to tell all about his, Gorin's, illicit dealings with Pichugin. In other words, he openly blackmailed the father of the owner of Russia's biggest group of companies. The investigation did not bother to ask exactly how he gained access to the patriarch of the country's richest family, a man hardly likely to keep an open court.
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