The Preobrazhensky Court of Moscow has returned to lawyers of ex-Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev requests on releasing their clients on parole.
“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 the court, said.
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 on charges of embezzling oil from Yukos and laundering the proceeds.
Last month, a Moscow court upheld Khodorkovsky and Lebedev’s second conviction, but cut their sentences by a year. 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 6 (RIA Novosti)