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Lawyer of former MENATEP CEO Platon Lebedev appeals reduced term in prison

She is going to seek Lebedev's release

ARKHANGELSK, November 12 (Itar-Tass) — The lawyer of former MENATEP CEO Platon Lebedev filed an appeal in the criminal penal of the Arkhangelsk Regional Court against the verdict to reduce the term in prison for her client by three years as “violating the principle of adequacy.”

Larisa Vazerkina asked the court to hand down on Lebedev a final sentence “for the term actually served in prison at the moment of passing the cassation ruling on the present appeal,” the press centre of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev reported.

On November 1, Judge of the Velsky District Court in the Arkhangelsk Region Nikolai Raspopov satisfied the appeal filed by the lawyers and reduced the term in prison for Lebedev over the amendments introduced in several articles of the Criminal Code from 13 to ten years in prison. The prosecutor asked to reduce the term in prison to 11 years and three months, the lawyer appealed the reduction of the term in prison to the term already served in the prison.

On November 6, the prosecutor in the Velsky district appealed the court verdict. Senior aide to the regional prosecutor Yulia Shevchenko explained to Itar-Tass that “the dissatisfaction of the prosecutor with a too large reduction of the term in prison for Lebedev for separate crimes and a cumulative sentence by a total of three years gave grounds for the cassation ruling.”

If the verdict of the first instance court remains in effect, Lebedev can be released on July 1, 2013.

This was the repeated court proceedings over the reduction of the term in prison for Lebedev. Before this, on August 8, the court satisfied partially the appeal of the lawyers and reduced the term in prison for the businessman by three years and four months from 13 years to nine years and eight months. However, the lawyers, which were seeking for an immediate release of Lebedev, and the prosecutor, who insisted on a more moderate reduction of term in prison to 11 years and three months, appealed the verdict of the Velsky District Court.

Finally, on September 21, the Arkhangelsk Regional Court cancelled the ruling of the first instance court “over a too lenient sentence” and brought the criminal case back to Velsk to try it by another composition of the court.

On December 30, 2010, the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow sentenced former YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and former MENATEP CEO Platon Lebedev to 14 years in prison for oil misappropriation and money laundering. Thus, with due account of the court verdict passed in 2005 the term in prison for Lebedev was to expire in 2016.

He serves the sentence in the penitentiary in the town Velsk in the Arkhangelsk Region.