Baltimore Sun
January 28, 2004
Immigration panel
backs off effort to deport Russian banker
Appeals board raises questions about fairness of Russian justice system
By Scott Shane - Sun Staff
An immigration appeals panel reversed yesterday its decision to send
former Russian banker Alex Konanykhin back to Russia, ending a deportation
effort that was sharply criticized by a federal judge this week.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had expressed dismay with the Department
of Homeland Security for its insistence that Konanykhin be sent back to
Russia. One of the first post-Soviet Russian millionaires, he fled to
the United States in 1992, saying his life was in danger from ex-KGB officers
and Russian mobsters.
In yesterday's surprise ruling, the Justice Department's Board of Immigration
Appeals said recent developments raise enough questions about the fairness
of the Russian justice system to return the case to the immigration judge
who granted Konanykhin political asylum in 1999.
The same board overturned the asylum grant in November, finding "no
evidence to suggest that the Russian government employs corruption in
its criminal justice system as a tool of political persecution."
That baffled experts on Russia, particularly because it followed the
arrest of Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was charged with
fraud and tax evasion. The arrest sparked an international outcry and
was criticized by the U.S. government as a move by Russian President Vladimir
V. Putin to punish the billionaire for financing the political opposition.
In its new decision, the immigration appeals board appeared to take into
account the concerns raised by the Khodorkovsky case. It also agreed that
Konanykhin's lawyers could argue that the businessman would face torture
in Russian prisons.
The new decision does not rule out deportation for Konanykhin and his
wife, Elena Gratcheva, but makes that prospect unlikely, said Konanykhin
lawyer J.P Szymkowicz.
Konanykhin, 37, made a fortune building a bank and other businesses as
Russia emerged from communist rule in the early 1990s. After fleeing ex-KGB
agents who, he said, had muscled him out of the bank, he resettled in
Washington and worked for a time for Khodorkovsky, trying to drum up international
business for Khodorkovsky's Menatep Bank.
In 1994, a Russian prosecutor accused Konanykhin of stealing $8 million
from his old bank, charges he said were trumped up by former colleagues.
In 1996, Konanykhin was arrested by U.S. immigration officers on grounds
that he had committed immigration fraud. The charge was thrown out.
Documents indicate the fraud charge was devised by U.S. officials to
satisfy their Russian counterparts, who had sent several alleged mobsters
to face criminal charges in the United States and were demanding Konanykhin
in return.
After a legal battle, Konanykhin won asylum in 1999 and built a Web advertising
business based in New York City. But after the November decision ordering
his deportation, Department of Homeland Security officials took unusual
steps to try to send him to Russia.
Last month, U.S. immigration agents swooped down on Konanykhin and his
wife as they tried to cross from Buffalo, N.Y., into Canada for an appointment
to apply for political asylum.
The next day, Homeland Security officials ordered the couple put on a
plane to Moscow as Ellis was hearing an emergency appeal from Konanykhin's
lawyers. At the last minute, he halted the deportation.
In a later hearing, Ellis wondered aloud why Homeland Security officials
wouldn't permit Konanykhin to go to Canada instead of Russia, where he
says he would be killed.
"Why is there such an intense interest in the U.S. government to
send this man to Russia?" Ellis asked department attorneys. He called
the government's rush to deport Konanykhin "redolent," adding,
"You know what redolent means? It stinks."
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