The Moscow City Court lowered the second trial convictions for former Yukos Chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev from 14 to 13 years on May 24.

Earlier, the businessmen were sentenced to 14 years in prison for embezzling 200 million tons of oil and money laundering. The court reduced the term to 13 years and the verdict entered into force.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev requested the verdict be invalidated and the criminal case be closed due to lack of evidence. The former Yukos chief claims the verdict is absurd and “intentionally falsified.”

“Those who delivered the judgment made fools of themselves and the Russian judicial system when they said at a high-profile public hearing that embezzlement victims in Russia gain profit from embezzled property and the intention to increase profit is a crime itself,” Khodorkovsky said.

Khodorkovsky stressed that the company’s profit could not have been stolen as it had been taxed.

Lebedev said the second Yukos trial was falsified using doctored evidence.

During his speech, Lebedev discussed the major contradictory points of the verdict.
Specifically, he pointed out that there was no indication of the location where from the Yukos oil had allegedly been stolen, as there was no actual perpetrator of the crime.
Given these circumstances, he said, the court had no grounds to proceed with the trial. The case should have been returned to the Prosecutor-General’s Office, Lebedev said.

In the light of the Moscow City Court’s latest decision and the 2004 trial sentencing Khodorkovsky and Lebedev to eight years in prison for fraud and tax evasion, and considering the period of their actual imprisonment, their sentences will expire in 2016.