A Moscow court said it considered Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty on most of the charges against him in the politically charged case, the Russian news agency Interfax reported yesterday.
But the court yesterday suspended for a day the reading of the verdicts in the fraud and tax evasion trial of the oil tycoon and his business associate Platon Lebedev.
The court had pronounced the two men guilty of fraud on the first of 11 counts against them when Judge Yelena Maximova declared an adjournment. The session was to resume today.
PHOTO: AFP
Khodorkovsky, former head of the Yukos oil company and once estimated as Russia's richest man, was charged along with Lebedev with tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement, among other crimes. Prosecutors have asked for the maximum 10-year prison sentence.
Guilt "is confirmed by the material of the case and by the evidence of witnesses," Judge Irina Kolesnikova was quoted as saying. However, the report said Kolesnikova's statement did not constitute the final verdict for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.
There was wide speculation that the court would impose a lighter sentence in the case, which has raised concern about Russia's respect for rule of law. Khodorkovsky supporters contend the case against him was Kremlin-directed revenge for his funding of opposition parties.
One of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Genrikh Padva, said phrasings in the verdict, which was being read aloud, "give hope for a softer sentence," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The lengthy verdict process began on Monday and it was not clear when it would be completed.
Police yesterday beefed up security precautions outside the court building, erecting crowd barriers and metal detectors on both sides of the street and stopping passing cars for inspection. As Khodorkovsky's parents were waiting for admission to the courthouse, reporters asked what they expected from the day.
"Tell me what's good here," Boris Khodorkovsky responded, indicating the police officers lining both sides of the street.
About 100 anti-Khodorkovsky demonstrators carried placards bearing slogans such as "Khodorkovsky, return our money," reflecting the resentment among many Russians of businessmen like Khodorkovsky who became enormously wealthy in the 1990s economic free-for-all following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A pro-Khodorkovsky demonstration outside the court a day earlier was forcefully dispersed by police and Sergei Mitrokhin, a liberal politician who said he was detained and beaten in that incident, said yesterday's demonstrators had been seen leaving the Federal Security Service headquarters in Moscow in the morning -- implying their demonstration had official organization.
Khodorkovsky was delivered to a side entrance in an armored van, out of public view.
The reading of the verdict could still take days to complete, but the first words out of the judge's mouth Monday already left little doubt that he would be found guilty on all charges, his lawyers said.
Supporters say Khodorkovsky's the victim of a campaign rooted in Kremlin anger at his political ambitions, and one of his lawyers said the court is so subservient to prosecutors that its verdict is parroting their indictment "right down to the spelling errors."
Both at home and abroad, the case has raised questions about President Vladimir Putin's commitment to the rule of law. It also has disturbed foreign investors who are thinking twice about putting money into Russia despite an economy that is feeling the benefit of high world oil prices.
Khodorkovsky has been imprisoned since October 2003, when he was seized by special forces in a raid on his jet as it sat on the tarmac of a Siberian airport. Lebedev was arrested three months earlier.
Both were charged with crimes related to the 1994 privatization of a fertilizer-component company. During his 19 months in prison, his crown-jewel oil company Yukos has been hit with billions of dollars in back tax bills and its key production subsidiary acquired by the state after a murky auction ordered to meet part of the tax arrears.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are charged with rigging the privatization auction, stripping profits from a major fertilizer component maker, illegally using onshore tax havens to slash Yukos' tax bills and dodging millions in personal income tax.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the