Moscow – Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison for fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion after a 10-month trial shadowed by charges that the prosecution was orchestrated by the Kremlin to crush the political ambitions of a potentially dangerous opponent.
Khodorkov sky’s business partner and co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, also received a nine-year sentence. In addition, the two men were fined 17 million rubles, or approximately $615 million. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev will get 18 months and two years off, respectively, for time served since their separate arrests in 2003.
The convictions followed the reading over 12 days of a 1,000-page verdict by a three- judge panel in a Moscow district court. The verdict was greeted with dismay by the two defendants.
“I think it is a testament to Basmanny justice,” said Khodor kovsky, 41, speaking from behind the bars of the courtroom cage. Khodorkovsky’s case began in Moscow’s Basmanny District Court. Among critics of the Russian legal system, “Basmanny justice” became shorthand for a tainted justice system.
“Not one normal, sane person would understand what has been read out here,” said Lebedev.
At a news conference in Washington, President Bush said he had “expressed my concerns” to President Vladimir Putin about the fairness of the legal proceedings. “It appeared to us – at least people in my administration – that it looked like he had been adjudged guilty prior to … a fair trial,” Bush said. “In other words, he was put in prison and then was tried.”
Lawyers for the two men promised to appeal. They charged that as well as bringing down Khodorkovsky, the trial and a parallel prosecution of Yukos, the company he headed, allowed the state to seize control of some of the country’s richest oil fields and sent a pointed message about the consequences of crossing Putin.
Russian prosecutors said the depiction of Khodorkovsky and his associates as victims was part of a sophisticated public relations campaign and that the courts had finally brought to heel a pair of crooks who had bilked the state of billions.
