Today on December 15 the Moscow's Khamovnish Court will start to deliver a judgment on the second court trial on Khodorkovsky's case. Probably the delivering of the judgment will take several days.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev (head of Menatep) were sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment in 2005 for non payment of taxes.
In 2006 new legal pleading was initiated against them, at this time procurators demanded 14 years of imprisonment. In the second case they both are alleged in oil affairs; appropriation of illegally gained money and appropriation of the actives of the oil company amounted to 3 mn Russian Rubles.
For information, the Yukos case is one of the most important ones in Russian Federation. The Russian law enforcers accused the biggest company in the Russian Federation in various crimes. As a result of this the company was declared bankrupt. The actives of the company were passed to the company "Rossneft". The West considers that the Yukos case was politically biased. Nevertheless the Russian government refuses this categorically. Mikhail Khodorkovsky often is considered as a private prisoner of Putin. Khodorkovsky privately says the case against him is politically motivated and corrupted. The initiators of this process were people who are not willing to free him. The reason for this is that he was a supporter of independent opposition.