MOSCOW, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - A Moscow district court refused Monday to suspend the sentence of a former Yukos executive convicted on embezzlement and tax evasion charges, despite her having two minor children to care for.
The Simonovsky Court rejected a request from Svetlana Bakhmina's defense lawyers, who asked that the former deputy head of the legal department at the embattled oil company's Yukos Moskva unit be allowed to serve her six-and-a-half-year prison term after her younger child, now aged five, turns 14.
Bakhmina, charged with failing to pay 606,000 rubles ($22,600) in taxes in 2001-2002 and diverting 8 billion rubles' worth ($298.73 million) of property from Yukos subsidiary Tomskneft in the late 1990s, has maintained her innocence throughout the litigation process.
"I am innocent, but a question of even greater importance to me is when I will be able to see my children again," Bakhmina said. "I think the time I have spent at a detention center has already covered what can be qualified as guilt."
Lawyer Olga Kozyreva said Bakhmina's elder child was 10, and that a Moscow City Court judge has indicated that asking to delay the sentence would be perfectly valid in her case.
Legal proceedings launched against Yukos in 2003, seen by many as having been politically motivated, resulted in the conviction of Bakhmina and other executives and shareholders of Russia's once largest oil producer, including ex-CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
