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Jailed Yukos founder Khodorkovsky faces new charges - lawyers

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MOSCOW, June 30 (RIA Novosti) - Defense lawyers for the jailed founder of bankrupt oil firm Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said on Monday that new charges had been filed against their client.

The latest charges against the former oligarch and his business partner Platon Lebedev, also in prison on similar charges, include stealing government shares, illegal oil trading, and laundering $25 billion earned from oil sales in 1998-2004.

The defense lawyers called the new charges "an assortment of absurd and groundless allegations relating to the theft and legalization of the entire volume of oil produced by the Yukos oil company over a six-year period."

The statement said the new "file" runs for 145 pages, but largely reiterates previous charges against Khodorkovsky.

"It is difficult to say what is new in the latest set of charges; the text dated Feb. 3, 2007 has been slightly changed, but retains all factual flaws and groundless allegations."

Khodorkovsky, who turned 45 on June 25, and Lebedev, 41, were found guilty of tax evasion and large-scale fraud by a Moscow court in May 2005 and sentenced to nine years in prison. The Moscow City Court later reduced their terms to eight years.

The two men are currently serving their sentences in East Siberia. Both men have maintained their innocence of the charges, with Khodorkovsky claiming the sentence was a retaliation for his support of Russia's tiny opposition movement.

The jailing of the Khodorkovsky and other executives of what was once Russia's largest independent oil producer has been widely criticized in the West and seen as part of the Kremlin's drive to regain lucrative energy assets.

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