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Supervisory appeal regarding second Yukos case filed with the Supreme Court

The defense asked the Russian Supreme Court’s Criminal Offense Panel to repeal the ruling of the Moscow Khamovnichesky District Court

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, February 24 (Itar-Tass) —— A supervisory appeal regarding the second case of the former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the former Menatep Group head Platon Lebedev has been filed with the Russian Supreme Court. The appeal text was posted on the defense website on Friday.

The defense asked the Russian Supreme Court’s Criminal Offense Panel to repeal the ruling of the Moscow Khamovnichesky District Court and consequent rulings of the higher instances and to drop the case due to the absence of formal elements of the crime in the conduct of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

The appealed judgments are unjust, they were made with numerous legal violations and must be repealed with the closure of the case, the defense said.

In the opinion of the lawyers, the judgement in the second Yukos case and the Moscow City Court’s refusal to repeal it “were an attempt of the judiciary to legalize deliberately false and unfounded accusations brought to our clients in the pretrial period under the camouflage of the legal proceedings, which although disregarded objective realities.”

Moscow's Khamovnichesky District Court sentenced Khodorkovsky and Lebedev to 14 years in custody for crude embezzlement and money laundering on December 30, 2010. The convicts and their lawyers appealed the judgment. The Moscow City Court cut their prison term by one year on May 24, 2011. Their full prison time will end in 2016.

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