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Russian prosecutors demand 14 years jail for Khodorkovsky
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Russian prosecutors demand 14 years jail for Khodorkovsky
AFP - Saturday, October 23
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Russian prosecutors demand 14 years jail for Khodorkovsky
MOSCOW (AFP) - – Russian prosecutors Friday demanded 14-year sentences for jailed oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner who are standing trial on fresh embezzlement charges.
"We ask finally for a sentence of 14 years in a standard-regime colony," prosecutor Valery Lakhtin said in final arguments at the trial at a Moscow district court of the ex-Yukos chief and his co-accused Platon Lebedev.
The pair have been in jail since 2003 and Lakhtin said that the new sentence would run concurrently with their current eight-year jail term so that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, if convicted, would remain behind bars until 2017.
Khodorkovsky, 47, the former head of Yukos oil company and once Russia's richest man, and Lebedev, have both pleaded not guilty to the charges.
"This is a political trial motivated by corruption," Khodorkovsky said, while taking the stand in April in the case.
Konstantin Rivkin, Lebedev's lawyer, told journalists the prosecution were targeting innocent men.
"What our clients note is that the aim of the criminal investigation is not in the legal domain," he said. "They asked for 14 year jail sentences for innocent people."
Khodorkovsky's father, Boris Khodorkovsky, looked visibly upset at the demand for 14 years jail.
"I am 77. When they name these numbers to me, I know I will not bear it that long," he said afterwards.
Khodorkovsky was jailed along with Lebedev for eight years in 2005 on fraud and tax evasion charges that his supporters argue were trumped up to punish the tycoon for daring to finance opposition parties.
Before being convicted, the two men spent two years behind bars in pre-trial detention.
This was considered as time served and Khodorkovsky has just over a year left to serve, while Lebedev has 252 days.
They went on trial again on March 3 last year on the new charges of embezzling millions of tonnes of oil and money laundering that they have derided as farcical.
The prosecutors began their closing arguments on October 14, in the final phase of the trial.
Defence witnesses at the trial have included Trade and Industry Minister Viktor Khristenko and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
Kasyanov, who was fired by then president Vladmir Putin and has since become an opposition politician, insisted that he believed that all the charges against Khodorkovsky were politically motivated.
"By the end of 2003, I was firm in the opinion that both were arrested on a politically motivated basis," Kasyanov said, testifying in court in May.
But the prosecutor rejected Kasyanov's statement as "false".
In November Putin compared Khodorkovsky to US fraudster Bernard Maddoff and gangster Al Capone.
His government insists the former oil magnate is guilty of massive financial crimes stemming from the controversial privatisations of the 1990s.
A survey by Levada independent polling agency published earlier this month found that 42 percent of Russians believed the case would be decided "in the corridors of power", with less than 20 percent believing the court would decide.
Only eight percent believe that the trial is about compliance with the law.
At the time of his arrest in 2003, Khodorkovsky was seen as a political rival to Putin.
Putin last month accused Khodorkovsky of resorting to murder to protect his business interests.
"His hands are stained with blood," Putin told a meeting of the Valdai club of leading international experts on Russia. "He killed people to protect the economic interests of his company."
But no charges have ever been pressed against Khodorkovsky based on these allegations.
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