A Moscow court on Thursday set an early release date for the jailed ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s former richest man who opposed President Vladimir Putin since the early years of his rule.
The Moscow City Court counted the nine years served by the Yukos oil company founder and his co-defendant Platon Lebedev and cut his remaining stay by two years, setting their release for 2014.
The defence appeal came in response to recent changes in the criminal legislation that affect the money laundering charge against them.
“This way Mikhail Khodorkovsky is to be freed in October 2014, and Platon Lebedev in July 2014,” said a statement on Khodorkovsky’s media site.
The defence however denounced the ruling, saying that under the new legislation the correct decision would have been to set them free.
“The two-year reduction is not in accordance with the changes in Russian laws,” said Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant.
“The conviction should be completely lifted, and our defendants should be freed,” he told AFP.
The reduction applies to the charge of money laundering, court spokeswoman Anna Usacheva was quoted by news agencies as saying.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were convicted of embezzlement and money laundering in their second trial in late 2010.
They had already been serving time for an earlier conviction for fraud and tax evasion, their release set for just a few months after the controversial second sentence.
Klyuvgant called Thursday’s decision as a “continuation of political reprisals under the cover of the courts,” vowing to appeal.
But President Vladimir Putin told reporters he had nothing to do with the ruling, nor Khodorkovsky’s earlier prosecution, repeating that Russia has an independent court system.
“Everyone tries to present this as a political case,” Putin said. “But was Mikhail Borisovich really involved in politics, was he a parliament member? There was no such thing. It is a completely economic case, let’s not politicise it,” said Putin, using Khodorkovsky’s formal patronymic.
“If everything goes as normal, Mikhail Borisovich will go free, and I wish him health,” Putin said.
Khodorkovsky’s lawyers called Putin’s reaction “demagoguery.”
Last month, a district court ruled that there should be a more significant reduction in Lebedev’s sentence to allow for his release in July 2013, but that decision was overruled by a regional judge.
Khodorkovsky was Russia’s richest man and a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin when he was first arrested in 2003, with armed agents leading him away from his private plane during a refueling stop.
Since then his company Yukos has been dissolved, allegedly by Putin’s inner circle, and most notably his right hand in energy policies Igor Sechin.
The Kremlin denied the charges, although the most prized pieces of Yukos were moved to the state-controlled Rosneft, which became Russia’s biggest oil company.
Supporters say his prosecution was punishment for daring to finance political opposition in Russia.
In his second trial, Khodorkovsky was found guilty of embezzling almost all of his company’s oil profits over a set period.
Since June 2011, he had been jailed in Karelia, a region in the northwest of Russia that is nearly 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) from Moscow, formerly the site of several Soviet labour camps.
He has published a string of articles highly critical of Putin’s political system, as well as his vision for reforming Russia, leading some observers to call him the country’s Nelson Mandela.
In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights censured Russia over Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment, but refused to back claims that his arrest had been politically motivated.
Russia cuts Khodorkovsky jail time by two years
