MOSCOW, May 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Supreme Court has asked a lower court to hand over materials from the case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky to consider an appeal against his eight-year sentence, the jailed tycoon's lawyer said Friday.
In May 2005, the Moscow Meshchansky Court found former Yukos CEO Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev guilty of tax evasion and grand fraud and sentenced both to nine years in a penal colony, a term that was later reduced to eight years.
"We have appealed the Russian Supreme Court to overturn the sentence as illegal and groundless," lawyer Genrikh Padva said Friday.
On January 23, 2006, the Meshchansky court ruled that funds totaling more than $600 million in Russian bank accounts held by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev should be seized to clear multi-billion dollar back taxes owed by Yukos oil company. The court also ruled that Khodorkovsky's personal accounts, totaling $47,210, should be transferred to the federal budget.
The Moscow City Court has rejected all appeals to review the case against Khodorkovsky and said the ex-oligarch deserved the punishment.
Khodorkovsky is serving his sentence in a penal colony in the town of Krasnokamensk in eastern Siberia, while Lebedev is at a colony in the Arctic region of Yamalo-Nenets.
