Gref, Khristenko to Testify

June 21, 2010

Sberbank CEO German Gref and Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko have confirmed that they will testify at the trial of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky this week.

“I am a law-abiding citizen. I have received a subpoena, and I will certainly go to this trial,” Gref said Friday on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Interfax reported.

Gref, a former economic development and trade minister who is scheduled to testify Monday, had earlier left it unclear whether he would appear as a defense witness in the state’s $25 billion embezzlement case against Khodorkovsky. Shortly after a Moscow court issued summons to him in May, he said he had not seen the papers but they might be somewhere at his bank.

Khristenko is scheduled to testify Tuesday. “In this case I’m not simply a minister but a citizen, and as such I’m bound to follow the subpoena I have received,” Khristenko told reporters in St. Petersburg.

(MT)

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