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This was enough for the prosecutors to figure out a pattern: all three crimes - the blast against Kostina's parents, the assault against Kolesov and Gorin's disappearance in Tambov - had been plotted by Pichugin on my instructions. Not only that but they also got it into their heads that Pichugin and I were related. When we started putting all this nonsense together, we realised that they had mistaken Pichugin for my son Aleksey Arbenin, who does indeed bear a passing resemblance. It was my son who had been in my office and they could well have seen me out with him in a restaurant or elsewhere. But the prosecutors and FSB decided (because it was in their interests to do so) that Pichugin was acting at my behest, and that he had to be brought in so they could extract testimony against me. Obviously, this is rubbish. I didn't know Pichugin. Well, I did know of him, of course, and that he was the head of a section within the security service, but I was not personally acquainted with him and had certainly never dined out with him. Still, Pichugin was arrested in June 2003. After his arrest they called me in for questioning at the Procuracy General. I tried to explain that they had got it wrong with Pichugin, that he had no connection with me whatsoever and was guilty of nothing. But by now they couldn't accept that, the wheels had already been set in motion and there was no stopping them. This dismal sequence of distortion and invention by prosecutors, from ludicrous allegations by various FSB types, cost the freedom of a blameless man. Pichugin, who had given 15 years of his life to the system and risen to a decent level within it, suffered at the hands of the selfsame system for no reason at all. He got 20 years in a high-security prison simply because of mistaken identity. I think that someone latched on to the claim that I was on frequent speaking terms with Pichugin, and they thought this would enable them to get from him the evidence they needed against me. They also apparently thought they could easily cut a deal with Pichugin because he used to be one of them - before he joined Yukos, Aleksey had had a long career in state security. But they were wrong. As I said earlier, Pichugin couldn't tell them anything because he had not been in contact with me. But, more importantly, throughout this whole disgraceful episode he bore himself as a man of honour. Despite all the threats and the mind-bending substances used on him, he defied the FSB and refused to incriminate either himself or Yukos - meaning Khodorkovskiy, me, or Shestopalov, the company's head of security." Denunciation No wonder the press and commentators were caught out if even those close to the throne had no idea this was where the Yukos case was heading. It's worth going into more detail about the report to Putin on the Apatit privatisation. It was written by our Prosecutor General, after Novgorod Region Governor Prusak alleged in autumn 2002 that this major business had been sold off illegally to parts of the Menatep group. Although the dispute was resolved through arbitration, Prusak refused to accept the outcome. This was to become the first in the array of charges laid against Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev.
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