MOSCOW, December 11 - RAPSI. The Moscow Simonovsky District Court has withdrawn the arrest from the assets of the late Vasily Aleksanyan, involved in the YUKOS case, the court told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI/rapsinews.com) on Tuesday.

The court has upheld the attorney's motion.

In its ruling, the court stated that the criminal case against Aleksanyan ended in the summer of 2010 due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. The lawsuits were shelved.

The court said there is no need to have the assets under further arrest.

This is the third ruling on withdrawing the arrest. The two previous rulings were canceled by the Moscow City Court.

The property was seized in an embezzlement case against Aleksanyan.

In May, Moscow's Simonovsky District Court lifted the seizure of the Moscow suburb house and car owned by Aleksanyan and inherited by his father for the second time.

The ruling was passed due to the termination of the case when Aleksanyan was still alive, which means that the property seizure should be lifted.

Aleksanyan died on October 3, 2011 at the age of 39. He was arrested in 2006 with other top YUKOS managers on charges of stealing property from Tomskneft and shares in refineries and oil producing companies owned by the Eastern Oil Company.

Aleksanyan spent nearly 2.5 years in prison. His lawyers asked for his pretrial conditions to be reconsidered due to his poor health, but instead his custodial sentence was extended.

On February 8, 2008, the former top manager was moved from the pretrial detention center to an outside oncology ward. In summer 2010, the court terminated the case proceedings as the statute of limitations had expired. He was never convicted or acquitted.

The YUKOS case has been one of the most high profile in Russia in recent years. In the early 2000s, the authorities accused YUKOS executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev of economic crimes. YUKOS, then the country's largest oil company, went bankrupt and its assets were taken over by Rosneft. Many in the West believe the case was politically driven, although Moscow denies the charges.

In 2005, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud and tax evasion.

In late 2010, a Moscow district court sentenced them to 14 years in prison for oil theft and money laundering. They were expected to be released in 2017, considering the time they had already served for their previous convictions from their first trial.

However, the Moscow City Court reduced their sentences by one year on May 24.