Moscow, Dec 30 (DPA) Russian oil billionaire Mikhail Khordokovsky was sentenced Thursday to 13 and a half years in prison for stealing oil and laundering the proceeds, Interfax reported.
However, the nearly eight years he has already served in a Siberian penal camp for evading taxes on the sale of oil at his now-dismembered Yukos oil company will count toward that sentence.
That will keep Khodorkovsky, a prominent Kremlin critic, behind bars until around 2017. He had previously been due for release in 2011, at the end of his first jail sentence.
The second trial of the arch-foe of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has drawn major international criticism, with allegations that it was politically motivated and an attempt to sideline the rich and influential businessman prior to the 2012 presidential elections.
Russia’s Presidential Council on Human Rights said it would carefully examine the verdict.
‘Long live our impartial Russian court,’ Khodorkovsky proclaimed sarcastically after his sentence was read out.
‘(We) have shown by example that you cannot count on the courts to protect you from government officials in Russia,’ he was later quoted as saying in a statement released through a website developed by his legal team. ‘But we have not lost hope, nor should our friends.’
His mother, who was present in the courtroom as the verdict was read out, cursed the judge and his descendants.
Special police units sealed off most of the courthouse to prevent protests by government opponents similar to those that took place Monday, when Judge Viktor Danilkin had convicted Khodorkovsky, 47, and his former business partner, 54-year-old Platon Lebedev.
Danilkin found the two managers guilty of stealing 218 million tonnes of oil – worth the equivalent of $29 billion – from Yukos and laundering the proceeds. Lebedev received the same sentence as Khodorkovsky Thursday.
Danilkin had spent the past few days reading out the entire verdict, which is at least 800 pages long.
Observers had theorized Thursday that a lesser sentence could be in the wings, after the judge suddenly spoke of ‘large quantities’ of stolen oil instead of the ‘very large quantities’ that had previously been mentioned.
Danilkin had, however, also made clear that a suspended sentence was out of the question.
The prosecution had demanded a six-year prison term. In the final days leading up to Monday’s verdict, Putin, during a live television interview, had also declared that ‘the thief must remain in jail’.
Khodorkovsky argued Thursday that ‘the ‘Churov Rule’ is alive and well’, referring to statements made several years ago by Russian Central Election Commission chairman Vladimir Churov that then president Vladimir Putin ‘is always right’.
Human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva called the verdict ‘unfair and senseless’ and ‘a disgrace for Russia,’ the Ria Novosti news agency said. Former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, who is now a government critic, said the verdict was part of ‘Putin’s vendetta’ against Khodorkovsky.
‘Putin suffers from an exceptionally perverse form of ‘Khodorophobia,” he added.
A spokesman for the premier declined comment directly after the issuance of the verdict. Neither Putin nor President Dmitry Medvedev have publicly commented on the trial since Monday’s conviction.
Khodorkovsky has predicted that he has no chance of getting out of prison as long as Putin remains in power.
His defence has repeatedly rejected the theft and money laundering allegations, saying that the verdict was based on ‘blatantly false accusations’ and pledging to file an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights if he was found guilty.
Khodorkovsky has already rejected any potential pardon by Medvedev, his lawyer said.
Danilkin said that a separate civil proceeding would rule on possible damages.
Khodorkovsky, a Moscow native, rapidly built up his business empire after the fall of Communism in Russia 20 years ago. A chemist by training, he had tremendous successes with the trade of everything from nesting dolls depicting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to computers and cognac.
He eventually founded a bank with friends and secured a holding for $300 million in what eventually became the Yukos oil company, which soon grew to the largest in the country. His fortune was estimated to be as high as $15 billion.
But then Khodorkovsky broke the unwritten Kremlin rule that oligarchs are to stay out of politics if they are to be left alone by the power elite.
Khodorkovsky took on Putin and financed the opposition. He also accused the Russian leadership of being corrupt and negotiated with US companies about their possible entry into Yukos.
In October 2003, Khodorkovsky was arrested in Novosibirk after his private jet landed for a stopover.
