Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the founder of the Yukos oil giant and formerly Russia’s wealthiest man, has been sent to a prison colony in eastern Siberia to serve the rest of his eight-year sentence for financial crimes, officials said on Thursday.
Alexander Pleshkov, head of the punishment implementation department for Siberia, told Interfax news agency the tycoon had been sent to a colony in the Krasnokamensk district of Chita province, close to the Chinese border, and placed in quarantine for two weeks for medical checks.
“The quarantine will last two weeks. After that Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be assigned work,” Pleshkov said.
Khodorkovsky’s chief lawyer, Genrikh Padva, confirmed the transfer had occurred.
“Khodorkovsky is in the Chita province at Krasnokamensk, where the uranium mines are. His lawyers want to go there immediately,” Padva told Agence France Presse.
Khodorkovsky (42) was convicted alongside co-defendant Platon Lebedev on May 31 on charges of embezzlement, fraud and tax evasion relating to his business activities in the 1990s.
Supporters of Khodorkovsky have denounced the state’s legal assault on him and the Yukos firm as a Kremlin-driven reprisal for the tycoon’s forays into politics in opposition to President Vladimir Putin. – AFP