Yukos oil founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky was found guilty on Tuesday of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison after a politically charged trial seen by critics as a Kremlin-driven vendetta against Russia’s once-richest man.
Co-defendant Platon Lebedev, one of Khodorkovsky’s former business associates, was also found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison.
The sentences were one year short of the maximum 10-year penalty sought by the state prosecution.
Chief Justice Irina Kolesnikova said the decision by a three-judge panel could be appealed to a higher judicial authority within 10 days.
Defence lawyers had vowed to file such an appeal in the event of a verdict and sentence like that handed down on Tuesday.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were convicted under all six of the articles in the Russian criminal code under which various charges were filed against them.
Defence lawyers have indicated they will appeal the verdict not just through Russian judicial channels but possibly at the European Court of Human Rights and through an international campaign of pressure against President Vladimir Putin’s government.
The trial, which began on June 16 last year, has sparked widespread international criticism, shaken the confidence of investors and perhaps contributed to a surge in capital flight from Russia last year.
The authorities described Khodorkovsky (41) as a robber baron who bought Yukos on the cheap during the murky and unregulated privatisation process of the early 1990s.
When police arrested Khodorkovsky as he was about to take off in his private jet from a Siberian airport in October 2003, he was believed to be Russia’s richest man, worth an estimated $15-billion (R100-billion), according to Fortune magazine.
Supporters said Khodorkovsky is no worse than the other so-called ”oligarchs”, the less than two dozen men who rose to the top of Russia’s chaotic and freewheeling post-Soviet move towards privatisation.
Defenders underlined that under Khodorkovsky, Yukos became known in the West as Russia’s most transparent and well-run company.
Many analysts and human rights defenders said his real mistake was to become actively involved in politics, funding opposition parties and, with his wealth and influence abroad, posing a threat to Putin’s iron grip on power.
Yukos itself was crippled by a $28-billion (R187-billion) back-tax bill, and its chief oil production unit is now owned by the state-controlled Rosneft company.
While expectation was high that a formal verdict would come this week, the vows to appeal, as well as a threat of new money-laundering charges, mean the saga will go on.
The verdict hearing has already taken two weeks, with justices led by Irina Kolesnikova reading from a judgement hundreds of pages long, and on some days working less than three hours.
The tortuously slow process, as well as the decision to begin road works outside, was widely seen as an attempt to dampen media attention and keep away onlookers and supporters of the fallen tycoon. — AFP
