Yukos founders Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, both serving eight-year sentences in Siberia since 2005 for fraud and tax evasion, are facing new money laundering charges.
The court in the East Siberian city of Chita thereby upheld Lebedev's appeal seeking access to the documents, which his lawyer said were kept in government archives and were needed to defend his client in the new criminal case.
The Prosecutor General's Office now alleges that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are guilty of embezzling receipts from Yukos subsidiaries Fargoil and Ratibor, and of laundering the money through the Open Russia Foundation, a charitable organization established by Khodorkovsky in 2001 as a private endowment to assist academic institutions and non-governmental organizations in Russia.
The defendants were taken to the pre-trial detention center in Chita in December 2006.
Khodorkovsky, who acquired oil assets through controversial privatization deals in the early-1990s, has insisted his case was orchestrated by the authorities to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin and as part of a campaign to bring mineral assets under Kremlin control.
Once Russia's largest crude producer, Yukos was declared bankrupt August 1 after three years of litigation with authorities over tax arrears.
