Anyone following the Lazarenko Trial in SF?

[Ulysses]

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Ukraine's former prime minister went on trial on Monday in San Francisco, charged with illegally laundering $114 million dollars in a rare case against a former foreign leader on U.S. soil.

Pavlo Lazarenko, who served as prime minister of the former Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1996 to 1997, is accused of defrauding and extorting his country of hundreds of millions of dollars and laundering $114 million through U.S. banks.

He has previously been convicted in absentia for money laundering in Switzerland and charged with murder in Ukraine.

As he walked down the San Francisco federal courthouse hallway with his adult son, Lazarenko told Reuters that he was confident of winning an acquittal.

"Absolutely. Not only because I want to believe, but because I've read all the evidence from beginning to end and I'm absolutely convinced I am not guilty," he said in Russian.

Asked if he was prepared for trial after years of legal wrangling, the silver haired, burly former Communist party official said: "I don't think it would be right to say one is ever prepared for something like this. But the opening remarks of my lawyer will show there is no reason to bring a case against me."

Lazarenko moved his family to San Francisco during the 1990s when he was prime minister. He was arrested on his arrival in the United States in February, 1999.

Prosecutor Martha Boersch portrayed Lazarenko as someone who used his political power to shake down people for money, boost his own businesses and amass great wealth in the chaotic transition years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

"He totally abused his official position to put money in his own pockets," said Boersch. "From 1992-99 he corruptly took hundreds of millions of dollars from his own country."

CROOKED OFFICIAL OR SAVVY BUSINESSMAN?

Lazarenko's defense attorney Doran Weinberg told jurors that his client had indeed become very wealthy in the 1990s but said intelligence and savvy led to the gains. "With his drive, his intelligence he created an extraordinary record of success, both in business and public administration," he said.

"There were enormous business opportunities," Weinberg said. "Those opportunities were availed to people like Pavlo Lazarenko."

Weinberg said the path to riches in 1990s Ukraine included selling goods obtained at fixed state prices at a profit, taking out low-interest loans in a period of very high inflation and buying enterprises through cheap privatization vouchers.

He said the charges against Lazarenko stemmed from his political opposition to Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma and said the former prime minister moved around millions of dollars in funds abroad to support an opposition party.

A key witness in the trial will be Lazarenko's former business partner, Peter Kiritchenko, who has agreed to testify as part of his own plea agreement with U.S. authorities. The defense told the jury that plea undermines his testimony.

U.S. attorney Boersch warned the jury that some of the testimony in the trial will be complicated and even tedious, but necessary to prove the case. Already on the first morning jurors heard explanations of the 1990s reorganization of the Ukrainian natural gas market as well as a blizzard of acronyms related to the case.

Jurors are expected to hear testimony translated from Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Greek, French and Dutch.