A Russian judge began reading the verdict on Monday in jailed former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s politically charged second trial, a test of the Kremlin’s will for reform ahead of a 2012 presidential vote.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and now its most famous prisoner, was led into a courtroom cage and uncuffed.
Khodorkovsky, former head of the now defunct oil giant Yukos, is nearing the end of an eight-year sentence imposed in a fraud and tax-evasion trial that shaped Vladimir Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency.
Prosecutors say he stole $27-billion in oil from Yukos subsidiaries through pricing schemes and want him sentenced to six more years in prison. His lawyers dismiss the charges as an absurd, politically motivated pretext to keep him behind bars.
For government critics, a conviction and lengthy sentence would signal that longstanding Kremlin promises to reform a court system marred by corruption and political influence are insincere.
Dressed in black, Khodorkovsky (47) was led into a glass-and-steel cage in a Moscow coutroom presided over by judge Viktor Danilkin. Looking pale but composed, Khodorkovsky waved and flashed a smile to the packed room.
A few hundred people stood outside the courthouse, chanting “Freedom.”
It could take days or weeks to read out the verdict in the trial of Khodorkovsky and business partner Platon Lebedev, possibly leaving the sentence unclear until after the end of Russia’s winter holidays on January 10.
The verdict and the sentence, which many suspect will be decided in the Kremlin, will be widely seen as a sign of whether President Dmitry Medvedev has the will — and the clout — to free a man whose imprisonment is a symbol of Putin’s rule.
Putin, Russia’s most powerful politician, dominates what officials call a ruling tandem with Medvedev even though as prime minister, he is subordinate to the protégé he steered into the presidency in 2008.
Both men say they will decide together who will run for president in 2012 as the Kremlin’s shoo-in candidate, but many Russians suspect it is Putin who will make the choice.
Justice system
Medvedev has championed a progressive Russia underpinned by the rule of law, and said improving a justice system marred by corruption and political influence is a crucial step.
But with little progress visible, Russians who support those goals fear his talk amounts to little more than window-dressing for Putin’s more restrictive policies and his continued rule. A guilty verdict for Khodorkovsky would reinforce those doubts.
A sentence of six more years would keep him in jail until late 2017, close to the end of the next president’s six-year term, clouding Medvedev’s promises of the rule of law if he remains in the Kremlin.
Khodorkovsky’s wife Inna told Russia’s Snob magazine on Sunday that she was sure her husband will remain in prison until at least 2012.
“My husband will stay in prison till 2012, that’s for sure. And who knows what will happen after that? No one,” she said in the online version of the edition.
Khodorkovsky fell foul of the Kremlin during Putin’s first term after he aired corruption allegations, challenged the state’s control over exports of Russian oil and quietly funded opposition parties.
After his arrest in 2003, Yukos was bankrupted by back-tax claims and its assets sold off, most ending up in state hands, deepening Western concerns about property rights and the rule of law in Russia under Putin.
A sense of personal rivalry between Putin and Khodorkovsky has persisted. In televised comments on December 16, Putin suggested Khodorkovsky had been involved in killings, said his economic crimes had been proven in court and that “a thief must be in jail”.
Putin later insisted he was talking about Khodorkovsky’s existing conviction, not the current trial.
But Khodorkovsky’s lawyers accused Putin of exerting influence and Medvedev signalled his disapproval, saying in a nationally televised interview on Friday that no official has the right to comment before a verdict is reached.
The judge had been scheduled to begin reading the verdict on December 15, but a terse postponement notice was taped to the courthouse door that day, fuelling suspicion that the Kremlin wanted to decrease global attention by delaying the verdict until the holiday season. – Reuters