Yukos security chief gets 20 years in jail for double murder

Russia: A Russian court sentenced the one-time security chief of the Yukos oil company to 20 years in jail for murder yesterday, in the first of what is expected to be a string of convictions against former top executives from the embattled energy giant.

Alexei Pichugin was found guilty last week of arranging the murder of Sergei and Olga Gorin in 2002 on the orders of Leonid Nevzlin, a top Yukos official, who is wanted by Russia on a number of charges and now lives in exile in Israel.

He fled Russia after seeing the founder of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and another top shareholder, Platon Lebedev, arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion as part of an unprecedented legal attack on what was Russia's largest oil producer.

On Tuesday, state prosecutors asked for the maximum 10-year jail sentence for Mr Khodorkovsky, who was Russia's richest tycoon until the legal onslaught stripped away many of his assets and sent the market value of Yukos plummeting.

The billionaire's legal team expect a verdict in May in a case that his allies call Kremlin-backed revenge for his criticism of President Vladimir Putin, and for his plans to sell part of Yukos to a US oil major, which would have boosted both his influence in Washington and his ability to challenge Mr Putin's political supremacy.

Lawyers for all the Yukos officials say the courts are following political orders to convict the defendants. "We will appeal this decision all the way through the courts," said Georgi Kaganer, one of the lawyers for Pichugin, who was also convicted of involvement in the attempted murder of a former Yukos employee and the beating of another man.

"No evidence was offered to prove his participation in these crimes," Mr Kaganer said.

Pichugin's legal team say the prosecution's case was based on the unreliable testimony of Igor Koronikov, a rapist and serial killer currently serving a life sentence, who was allegedly hired by the former Yukos man to perform a "hit".

The state ordered the trial to be conducted behind closed doors because confidential material was to be used as evidence. According to Pichugin's lawyers, not a single such document was produced.