MOSCOW, July 12. /TASS/. Former security chief of the now defunct Yukos oil giant Alexei Pichugin who was sentenced to life imprisonment for organizing several murders has asked the Russian president for pardoning, Pichugin’s lawyer Kseniya Kostromina told TASS on Wednesday.

"The fact of filing the second petition for pardoning, which was submitted on May 4, 2017, is related to the desire to give the Russian Federation the possibility to implement two rulings of the ECHR [European Court of Human Rights], which has recognized the judicial processes against Pichugin as unfair," she said.