MOSCOW, August 31 (Itar-Tass) — The administration of the penitentiary in Karelia's town of Segezha has reprimanded former YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky twice since July, according to the website of the lawyers of Khodorkovsky and former MENATEP director Platon Lebedev.
"Two reprimands have been issued to Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the past 30 days; one for giving a pack of cigarettes to a cellmate (in prison administration's parlance it is called ‘illegal alienation of objects in favor of other convicts’). The second reprimand was issued after Khodorkovsky, who was unable to fulfil the foreman's task because of the absence of the welder, was waiting for the foreman in his room to hear out a new task, without leaving the premises of the shop," a statement on the website said.
The administration called it "unconscientious attitude to labour," and "staying in a place without permission."
Khodorkovsky representatives noted that in Krasnokamensk (where he was serving his sentence under the first verdict) everything began in the same way six years ago.
Khodorkovsky's reprimands back then were false, and the alleged violations were far-fetched, his lawyers said.
"Courts repeatedly recognized these reprimands illegal," they underlined.
The lawyers said they had demanded all the official documents on the reprimands from the Segezha penitentiary administration in order to lodge a protest.
"Of course, the timing of the reprimands with the receiving by the Segezha penitentiary of the long-suffering parole petition by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which he filed in Moscow and which had been going through red-tape for three months is purely accidental," the lawyers said in ironic comments.
On December 30, 2010, Moscow's Khamovniki court sentenced Khodorkovsky and Lebedev to 14 years in prison for theft of oil and laundering the proceeds.
The defendants and their lawyers appealed against the verdict.
On May 24, 2011, the Moscow City Court reduced their prison terms by on year. Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's jail terms expire in 2016.
Lebedev, who is at the Velsk penitentiary in the Arkhangelsk region, had asked for parole, but the Velsk district court did not grant his petition on July 27.