Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko cast doubt on prosecutors' case against Yukos on Tuesday as he told a Moscow court that he had no knowledge of embezzlement taking place at the now-bankrupt oil company.
Khristenko's testimony came a day after Sberbank CEO German Gref also failed to back prosecutors' charges against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev, who are serving an eight-year sentence on fraud and tax evasion charges and now stand accused of stealing 350 million tons of oil worth $30 billion.
The new charges could bring them another 22 1/2 years in prison. Khodorkovsky's supporters say the case is politically motivated.
Khristenko, who was a deputy prime minister supervising energy fields from 1999 to 2008, denied any knowledge of large-scale embezzlement at Yukos.
"The physical theft of oil from the pipeline network is a problem that has existed and continues to exist, and we regularly try to fight it. But as for theft on such a scale, millions of tons of oil, I am not aware of any such incidents," said Khristenko, who appeared self-assured and calm during questioning by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev personally.
Khristenko implicitly backed Monday's testimony of Gref, a former economic and trade minister who said he had heard nothing of large-scale oil embezzlement.
Khristenko said oil was transported across the country by Transneft, the state-owned pipeline monopoly, which should be held responsible for any missing oil instead of Yukos. He added that Yukos subsidiaries never filed any complaints about missing oil.
Prosecutor Valery Lakhtin tried to pose his own questions for Khristenko, but many were rejected by the judge to the evident irritation of Lakhtin, who left the courtroom several times during the three-hour hearing.
Khodorkovsky interrupted Lakhtin several times, exclaiming at one point: "The prosecutor is lying!"
"The prosecutor can't lie!" Lakhtin fired back, provoking laughter and applause among people in the courtroom.
Khristenko, who was summoned to Moscow's Khamovnichesky District Court as a witness for the defense, hurried out of the courtroom after the hearing, clutching a water bottle in one hand. He did not comment to reporters.
Lebedev's lawyer Konstantin Rivkin praised the testimony of the high-ranking officials at the trial.
"I don't think it means changes in this trial but in the country," Rivkin told journalists after the hearing. "We are satisfied with the answers given by Khristenko."
Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and ex-Central Bank chief Viktor Gerashchenko previously testified in favor of Khodorkovsky at the trial, with Gerashchenko summing up the charges as “utter crap.”