A Moscow court official said on Thursday that the court where ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to 14 years in jail, including time served, came under “unprecedented media pressure” during the trial.
Moscow City Court spokesperson Anna Usachova said “Russian and foreign journalists” had expressed the opinion that Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were guilty of the charges against them before the court had reached its verdict on a second set of charges against the former Yukos executives.
She also said that comments had appeared in the media suggesting that the court was determined to bring a guilty verdict against the two men.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who have already spent seven years in jail for fraud and tax evasion, will stay in prison until 2017 after being found guilty of large-scale oil embezzlement.
MOSCOW, December 30 (RIA Novosti)
