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The same Korovnikov testified that in 1999 Pichugin had sat in his car and they had had a lengthy discussion about murdering Gorin. There was no armrest, and they had talked face to face. And it was daylight. So why had he only recognised Aleksey sideways on, and in the gloom? But none of the prosecutors, judges or jury doubted his story.
I should point out here that the investigators filmed their questioning of Korovnikov at the prison. The conversations as recorded on film and as transcribed on paper greatly differ. On the tape, Korovnikov is being audibly prompted. But the film was not examined at the trial. It was surplus to requirements. Not even the transcript of Korovnikov's questioning, taken from the film, was produced in court.
When the defence asked in court for a copy of the tape to watch, they were turned down. The reason? The court reported that it lacked the necessary equipment to make a copy. In other words, it did not have a VCR. And this was a court with officers from the Procuracy General and the FSB in attendance!
How did the prosecution find such a witness? Very simple. The case of Korovnikov and his gang had been handled by the same Demidov, and he remembered that they had confessed to arranging the explosion outside the front door of former Yukos employee Olga Kostina. It was easy to put two and two together, although during the Korovnikov case nobody mentioned that Pichugin or anyone from Yukos was involved in the blast.
All the members of the gang testified to their own crimes. Korovnikov said nothing, but suddenly recalled everything that was needed when Demidov came calling. But this wasn't enough for the investigation. Demidov travelled to the prisons holding the other gang members - Erbes, Popov and Kabanets. But none of them would say what they were supposed to, and they all flatly denied Korovnikov's account.
Korovnikov's partners in crime had no intention of taking the rap for anything else. They were not on life sentences. And they were pretty cocksure as they dealt with Demidov: they were in a prison camp, in their own world. They all had to be taken to Lefortovo, where the conversations took place on entirely different terms. And where all three quickly began to back up Korovnikov's story.
The explosion in the stairwell
The investigation into the attack on former Yukos employee Kostina is illustrative in itself. It had already been investigated as one of several offences attributed to the Korovnikov gang. Except Korovnikov, they all admitted that they had gone to Moscow "to give the girl a fright". Korovnikov led them to her. But the investigation failed to found out why they did it and for whom, and did not even ask.
The actual attack happened as follows. In the middle of the night, the gang set off a small improvised explosive device by the lift in the stairwell, on the floor where Kostina's mother lived. A door leading off the stairwell to a corridor was slightly scorched. The door to Kostina's mother's flat was undamaged, as were all the others.
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