- (AFP) -- Russia's richest man and Kremlin opponent, Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, faced another three months in jail after a court ruled he
must stay behind bars until March 25, after the presidential election.
-
- Moscow's Basmanny Court granted a request by prosecutors
to prolong the pre-trial custody of the former boss of the Yukos oil giant,
Khodorkovsky's lawyers told reporters outside the courthouse following
a two-day hearing.
-
- They immediately announced they would appeal the ruling,
accusing the court of favouring the prosecution and branding the fraud
and tax evasion charges against the billionaire tycoon as politically-motivated.
-
- "We consider that the judges' actions prove their
bias," attorney Genrikh Pavda told Moscow Echo radio on Tuesday. Khodorkovsky
returned to the same court that approved his arrest on October 25.
-
- "I suspect there is strong political motivation
behind this criminal case," another of his lawyers, Karina Moskalenko,
said.
-
- As the hearing entered a second day, President Vladimir
Putin hinted in an address to business leaders at a renationalisation of
firms that broke the law, in an apparent reference to Yukos although he
did not mention the company by name.
-
- The court ruling means that Khodorkovsky will remain
in prison at least 11 days after the March 14 election in which Putin is
expected to easily win another term.
-
- Analysts say that Khodorkovsky and his Yukos company
are being hounded because he financed opposition parties that threatened
Putin's control of parliament.
-
- In the end, liberal and Communist opposition parties
backed by Khodorkovsky were crushed by pro-Putin forces in parliamentary
elections earlier this month, which handed the government a two-thirds
majority.
-
- Khodorkovsky's lawyers complained that they had been
given no time to study prosecutors' arguments for extending custody or
to consult with their client, and rejected claims that he was planning
to leave the country or put pressure on witnesses.
-
- "The ruling discredits the notion of an independent
court and shows that the trial (of Khodorkovsky) will not be a fair trial,"
said Maxim Dbar, spokesman for the Yukos-financed Open Russia foundation.
-
- Moscow newspapers expressed doubt that the Russian authorities
would allow the political opponent to be at liberty, particularly considering
the boost to Putin's popularity from any crackdown on Russia's super-rich
oligarchs.
-
- In a speech at the Russian chamber of commerce and industry,
Putin repeated assurances that he was not looking to renationalize profitable
state property but did not rule out confiscation of disputed assets.
-
- "We are not planning anything of the sort,"
Putin said in televised comments at the meeting, in reference to renationalization.
-
- But then he added: "We are not talking about people
who violated the law."
-
- Khodorkovsky faces seven charges of tax fraud and embezzlement
from the mid 1990s that came as he and partners were building an energy
empire that has since turned into Russia's largest oil company.
-
- He faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted and the
possibility of losing his dominant stake in Yukos, which has been frozen
along with shares held by his partners, which in total amounts to 40 percent
of Yukos capital.
-
- The 40-year-old businessman, whose company has been under
the blows of prosecutors since June, appeared in court for the second day
of closed-door proceedings, locked behind a metal cage in the courtroom.
-
- The future of Yukos, Russia's largest oil producer, has
seemed increasingly in doubt with all of its main shareholders either in
jail or in exile.
-
- The company was forced to abort a merger with rival Sibneft
that would have created the world's fourth-largest oil major and faces
the threat of a five-billion-dollar (four-billion-euro) tax bill and being
stripped of its oil production licenses.
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected
by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence
you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any
way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the
prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
|
