A Russian court on Wednesday reduced the sentence of a former businessman jailed along with a top executive of the oil company Yukos.
Vladimir Malakhovsky, the former head of the Ratibor, a Yukos trading firm, will be eligible for release in October following the ruling earlier this month, the khodorkovsky.ru website said.
Malakhovsky was sentenced to 12 years for fraud at a 2007 trial which also involved Vladimir Pereverzin, the former deputy head of the oil giant’s foreign debt directorate.
Pereverzin was released in February.
Earlier this month, a court reduced the sentence of Platon Lebedev, the jailed business partner of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in line with new legislation softening the punishment for economic crimes. His lawyers say he will be eligible for release in March next year.
The two men have been in jail since 2003, having been convicted of fraud and tax evasion at two trials in 2005 and 2010. Both trials have been widely criticized abroad. They maintain that the prosecution against them has been politically motivated, a claim denied by Russian authorities.