Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky has reissued an appeal for release on parole that was returned to him earlier this week due to a lack of documentation, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
A Moscow court last month upheld a second conviction against Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev, keeping them in jail until 2016 on what they claim are politically motivated charges of embezzling oil from Yukos and laundering the proceeds.
“The requests were returned since they were not supplemented with documents based on which the convicts are fulfilling their sentences,” Lalita Daricheva, a spokeswoman for Moscow’s Preobrazhensky Court said.
Khodorkovsky filed his new appeal with a covering letter, his lawyer said. The former businessman also requested his pre-trial detention centre to provide other necessary documents for the appeal.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, and Lebedev were jailed in 2003 on embezzlement and tax evasion charges. The two men were near the end of their eight-year prison term when they were sentenced to another six years in jail in December.
The two men have denied all charges against them, saying that they were revenge for Khodorkovsky’s funding of opposition parties during the presidency of Vladimir Putin, something the Russian authorities categorically deny.
MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti)