Khodorkovsky, Lebedev to get out of prison in 2016
17:57 24/05/2011 MOSCOW, May 24 (RIA Novosti) - The Moscow City Court ruled on Tuesday that jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev would be set free in 2016 after the court cut their total sentence from 14 to 13 years each.
The ruling means that the pair will be in custody until well after the March 2012 presidential elections in Russia.
The court heard an appeal on Tuesday from the lawyers of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev who have been serving their sentences in Siberia since 2005 for fraud and tax evasion after spending two years on remand.
The case was widely seen as politically motivated, in response to Khodorkovsky's funding of opposition parties in the Duma.
The court also upheld a decision to close a criminal case against the two men on allegations of stealing shares in the VNK company (Eastern Oil Company) as the term of the case has expired.
VNK was privatized in 1997 in a controversial auction.
Under Russian law, when a case is closed, it means the suspect is neither found guilty nor cleared of the charges. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev wanted the case to be reopened.
Prosecutor Valery Lakhtin said earlier on Tuesday that the court should recognize that the amount of oil the two men allegedly stole from Yukos was 129 million tons less than they originally were accused of embezzling.
In a speech to the court on Tuesday, Khodorkovsky said the charges against him and the sentence which had been handed down were "absurd."
The two men were originally sentenced to eight years in 2003 on fraud charges.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were sentenced to a further six years in prison in December 2010 for embezzlement and money-laundering.
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