MOSCOW – Former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky had his jail term extended until 2017 yesterday after being convicted of theft and money-laundering in a trial condemned in the West as politically motivated.
Moscow judge Viktor Danilkin granted the prosecutors’ request and ordered Mr Khodorkovsky to serve 14 years in prison, including his current eight-year term and counting from the day of his arrest in Siberia in October 2003.
With Mr Khodorkovsky and co-defendant Platon Lebedev watching from a glass-walled courtroom cage at the close of their trial, the judge said there was no way they could be reformed without “isolation from society”.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and head of the now defunct Yukos oil company, is in the final year of an eight-year sentence imposed after a politically charged fraud and tax evasion trial that shaped prime minister Vladimir Putin’s presidency, from 2000 to 2008.
Russia said the trial was a matter for its courts, and rejected as “groundless” US suggestions the verdict resulted from selective justice. The US state department sharply criticised the sentencing.
“We remain concerned by the allegations of serious due process violations, and what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends . . .” state department spokesman Mark Toner said.
“The impression remains that political motivations played a role in this trial,” German chancellor Angela Merkel said. “This contradicts Russia’s frequently repeated intention to pursue full adoption of the rule of law.”
One of the young tycoons who built fortunes after the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse, Khodorkovsky fell out with Mr Putin’s Kremlin after airing corruption allegations, challenging state control over oil exports and funding opposition parties.
Khodorkovsky, whose previous sentence was due to end next October, stood as Judge Danilkin announced the sentence, which his lawyers said was made under pressure from Mr Putin.
“May God damn you and your descendants,” Khodorkovsky’s mother Marina shouted at the judge’s back as he hurriedly left the courtroom after sentencing.
Khodorkovsky had adamantly denied the charges, and supporters said the conviction made a mockery of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s pledges to improve the rule of law.
“Our example shows that in Russia, you cannot hope the courts will protect you from government officials,” Khodorkovsky and Lebedev said in a statement read out by lead lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant after the sentencing.
“The sentence was clearly issued under pressure from the executive authorities, headed as before by Mr Putin,” said Yuri Shmidt, another lawyer on the defence team. “Putin signalled to the court who is the boss today and who today decides Khodorkovsky’s fate and life,” he said.
Mr Putin made no public reference to the sentence, and his spokesman declined to comment.
The sentence is a blow to Mr Medvedev, who has said independent courts are crucial to Russia’s future, casting doubts on his reform promises and reaffirming Mr Putin’s role as the real decision-maker. Mr Medvedev did not comment on the sentence.
The outcome stoked renewed accusations of selective justice and could strain Russia’s ties with the US and EU, which said the conviction raised questions over Moscow’s commitment to human rights.
“The new trial, the ruling and the sentence are unquestionably politically motivated,” German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Scharrenberger said in a statement. She said Khodorkovsky was clearly considered a threat to those in power.
“It will be perceived as the ultimate evidence Russia is not a law-governed state, nor has the intention to become one,” said Maria Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
“The consequences will be hard for Russia as a country seeking to attract investment and will take a toll on its reputation internationally,” she said. – (Reuters)