Day four of the verdict being delivered, and jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky says he "doesn't care" when his sentence will be handed down.
"In my situation, I don't really care," said Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, when prompted by a court bailiff escorting him into the courtroom after expressing hopes out loud that the sentence would be delivered by December 31 so that he could enjoy New Year celebrations.
In his final address in November, Khodorkovsky said it was "all the Russian people" who were "standing trial."
Judge Viktor Danilkin found Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner Platon Lebedev, 54, guilty of stealing from their former oil firm Yukos and laundering the proceeds in a second trial on Monday.
The two men have already spent seven years in jail for fraud and tax evasion from their 2005 trial.
The term of the new sentence is expected later today or early tomorrow, when Danilkin finishes reading the full 250-page verdict in the most significant trial since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The charges are viewed by some as trumped up and ordered by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to punish Khodorkovsky for funding the liberal opposition in the early 2000s, when Putin was president.
MOSCOW, December 30 (RIA Novosti)
