Russia's Kudrin received U.S. court notice

By Gleb Bryanski

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin received a U.S. federal court notice during a visit to Washington calling on him to testify in the case of the former CEO of bankrupt Russian oil firm YUKOS, Kudrin's spokesman said on Saturday.

The trial in Moscow of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed for eight years for tax evasion and fraud and is now on trial for new charges, is widely seen as a test of President Dmitry Medvedev's commitment to uphold the rule of law in Russia.

"On April 24, an unidentified person handed over some papers to Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Kudrin had no understanding about the content of the papers and immediately handed them over to one of his aides," Kudrin spokesman Pavel Kuznetsov said in an e-mailed statement written in Russian.

"As was established later, the papers were a notification, issued by the District of Columbia federal court, to testify in the criminal case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which is being heard in a Russian court."

It was not immediately clear why a U.S. court issued a notice related to the Russian trial.

YUKOS, which was once Russia's biggest oil company, was divided up and sold by Russia after massive back-tax claims. Kudrin was finance minister throughout the YUKOS affair.

Khodorkovsky is currently on trial on new charges that could keep him in jail for an additional 22 years.

Prosecutors at Moscow's Khamovnichesky district court say Khodorkovsky helped embezzle 900 billion roubles (18.1 billioni pounds) from subsidiaries of YUKOS and laundered 500 billion roubles of that total.