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Khodorkovsky, Lebedev sentenced to 14 years in prison (UPDATE)

Other News Materials 30 December 2010 19:31 (UTC +04:00)
Russian ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev will serve another six years in jail after being sentenced to 14 years detention at the culmination of their trial, RIA Novosti reported.
Khodorkovsky, Lebedev sentenced to 14 years in prison (UPDATE)

Russian ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev will serve another six years in jail after being sentenced to 14 years detention  at the culmination of their trial, RIA Novosti reported.

The two men, who have already spent seven years in jail for fraud and tax evasion from their 2005 trial, could face up to six more years in prison after the court found them guilty of embezzling 218 million tons of oil from Khodorkovsky's former oil firm Yukos and laundering over 3 billion rubles ($97.5 million) in revenues.

Khodorkovsky's press service said the two men would serve their sentence in a standard regime penal colony and could be released in 2017.

Judge Viktor Danilkin finished reading the full 250-page verdict on Thursday.

A Moscow court announced a guilty verdict on Monday to Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and seen as a political threat to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and his business partner Platon Lebedev.

The trial is seen by some analysts as a political vendetta by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom Khodorkovsky challenged by funding the liberal opposition in the early 2000s.

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